26 - Continental imports to Britain, 1695–1740

Summary

In 1733, the London printer and publisher Samuel Buckley presented a petition to Parliament, asking for protection for his impressive, seven-volume folio edition of Jacques-Auguste de Thou’s Historia sui temporis. Fearing that the work might be pirated on the Continent, he requested a ban against the importation of any foreign edition for a period of fourteen years. Although Buckley was well aware that the Copyright Act of 1710 had declared free the importation of all books in foreign languages, he argued that the Dutch government in particular had given its publishers an unfair market advantage by conferring numerous privileges while simultaneously conniving at the reprinting of what he described as ‘the most useful and vendible books published in the neighbouring nations, in the learned languages, or in French, the common language almost of Europe’. He concluded: ‘Great estates have been gained in Holland by reprinting books written in France, with which, as well as with the classics, and other books of literature, the Dutch have for many years largely supplied England, Scotland, and Ireland, as well as Germany and the Northern parts of Europe.’