5 - The rise of London’s book-trade

Summary

Any study of the late medieval history of the book in Britain must eventually turn to London where, from the fifteenth century onwards, the enterprise of various people involved with making, importing or selling books made the City dominant in national book commerce. The years covered by the present volume take in a remarkable period in London’s trade history, beginning in 1403, with civic ordinances of incorporation granted to a common fraternity of London book artisans (regularly known by the 1440s as the Mistery of Stationers), and ending in 1557, with the royal charter creating the Company of Stationers. Each of these formal organizations was itself the result of a separate major trade development: first, the rise of retail commerce in manuscript books, both newly commissioned and used, as a full-time occupation for book artisans and entrepreneurs drawn to London by its offer of economic opportunity; and second, the subsequent rise of broad-scale commerce in printed books, initially by foreign, but eventually by native, publishers and printers working to create a wholesale trade. Aspects of these two forms of book commerce constitute the basis of this chapter.

The early stages of London’s book-trade history have long been a matter for speculation, largely because little evidence bearing on book commerce survives. In City of London archives, we find the first mention of the trade in 1403, when various book craftsmen sought to form a common fraternity, uniting older guilds of manuscript artists and of text-writers, whose trade interests were now also to be joined with those of other Londoners who bound and sold books.