Oxford University Press

"OUP" redirects here. For other uses, see OUP (disambiguation).

Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books by decree in 1586,^[2] it is the second oldest university press after Cambridge University Press.^[3][4][5]

Oxford University Press

Parent company	University of Oxford
Founded	1586; 437 years ago (1586)
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Headquarters location	Oxford, England
Key people	Nigel Portwood (Secretary to the Delegates & CEO)^[1]
Publication types	Academic journals, books, sheet music
Imprints	Clarendon Press Blackstone Press
No. of employees	6,000
Official website	global.oup.com

It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics known as the Delegates of the Press, who are appointed by the vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford. The Delegates of the Press are led by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as OUP's chief executive and as its major representative on other university bodies. Oxford University Press has had a similar governance structure since the 17th century.^[6] The press is located on Walton Street, Oxford, opposite Somerville College, in the inner suburb of Jericho.

For the last 500 years, OUP has primarily focused on the publication of pedagogical texts and continues this tradition today by publishing academic journals, dictionaries, English language resources, bibliographies, books on indology, music, classics, literature, history, as well as bibles and atlases.

OUP has offices throughout the world, primarily in locations that were once part of the British Empire (mainly India and the United States).

History

 

Matrices for casting type collected by Bishop Fell, part of his collection now known as the "Fell Types", shown in the OUP Museum

The University of Oxford began printing around 1480 and grew into a major printer of bibles, prayer books, and scholarly works.^[7] Oxford's chancellor, Archbishop William Laud, consolidated the legal status of the university's printing in the 1630s and petitioned Charles I for rights that would enable Oxford to compete with the Stationers' Company and the King's Printer. He obtained a succession of royal grants and Oxford's "Great Charter" in 1636 gave the university the right to print "all manner of books".^[8] Laud also obtained the "privilege" from the Crown of printing the King James or Authorized Version of Scripture at Oxford.^[9] This "privilege" created substantial returns in the next 250 years.^[10]

Following the English Civil War, Vice-chancellor, John Fell, Dean of Christ Church, Bishop of Oxford, and Secretary to the Delegates was determined to installed printing presses in 1668, making it the university's first central print shop.^[11] In 1674 OUP began to print a broadsheet calendar, known as the Oxford Almanack, that has been produced annually without interruption from Fell's time to the present day.^[12] Fell drew up the first formal programme for the university's printing which envisaged hundreds of works, including the Bible in Greek, editions of the Coptic Gospels and works of the Church Fathers, texts in Arabic and Syriac, comprehensive editions of classical philosophy, poetry, and mathematics, a wide range of medieval scholarship, and also "a history of insects, more perfect than any yet Extant."^[13]

 

Oxford University Press building from Walton Street

Generally speaking, the early 18th century marked a lull in the press's expansion. It suffered from the absence of any figure comparable to Fell. The business was rescued by the intervention of a single Delegate, William Blackstone. Disgusted by the chaotic state of the press, and antagonized by the Vice-Chancellor George Huddesford, Blackstone called for sweeping reforms that would firmly set out the Delegates' powers and obligations, officially record their deliberations and accounting, and put the print shop on an efficient footing.^[14] Nonetheless, Randolph ignored this document, and it was not until Blackstone threatened legal action that changes began. The university had moved to adopt all of Blackstone's reforms by 1760.^[15]

By the late 18th century, the press had become more focused. In 1825 the Delegates bought land in Walton Street. Buildings were constructed from plans drawn up by Daniel Robertson and Edward Blore, and the press moved into them in 1830.^[16] This site remains the main office of OUP in the 21st century, at the corner of Walton Street and Great Clarendon Street, northwest of Oxford city centre.

The press now entered an era of enormous change. In 1830, it was still a joint-stock printing business in an academic backwater, offering learned works to a relatively small readership of scholars and clerics ^[17] At this time, Thomas Combe joined the press and became the university's Printer until his death in 1872. Combe was a better business man than most Delegates, but still no innovator: he failed to grasp the huge commercial potential of India paper, which grew into one of Oxford's most profitable trade secrets in later years.^[18] Even so, Combe earned a fortune through his shares in the business and the acquisition and renovation of the bankrupt paper mill at Wolvercote. Combe showed little interest, however, in producing fine printed work at the press.^[19] The most well-known text associated with his print shop was the flawed first edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, printed by Oxford at the expense of its author Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) in 1865.^[20]

It took the 1850 Royal Commission on the workings of the university and a new Secretary, Bartholomew Price, to shake up the press.^[21] Appointed in 1868, Price had already recommended to the university that the press needed an efficient executive officer to exercise "vigilant superintendence" of the business, including its dealings with Alexander Macmillan, who became the publisher for Oxford's printing in 1863 and in 1866 helped Price to create the Clarendon Press series of cheap, elementary school books – perhaps the first time that Oxford used the Clarendon imprint.^[22] Under Price, the press began to take on its modern shape. Major new lines of work began. To give one example, in 1875, the Delegates approved the series Sacred Books of the East under the editorship of Friedrich Max Müller, bringing a vast range of religious thought to a wider readership.^[23]

Equally, Price moved OUP towards publishing in its own right. The press had ended its relationship with Parker's in 1863 and in 1870 bought a small London bindery for some Bible work.^[24] Macmillan's contract ended in 1880, and wasn't renewed. By this time, Oxford also had a London warehouse for Bible stock in Paternoster Row, and in 1880 its manager Henry Frowde (1841–1927) was given the formal title of Publisher to the university. Frowde came from the book trade, not the university, and remained an enigma to many. One obituary in Oxford's staff magazine The Clarendonian admitted, "Very few of us here in Oxford had any personal knowledge of him."^[25] Despite that, Frowde became vital to OUP's growth, adding new lines of books to the business, presiding over the massive publication of the Revised Version of the New Testament in 1881^[26] and playing a key role in setting up the press's first office outside Britain, in New York City in 1896.^[27]

Price transformed OUP. In 1884, the year he retired as Secretary, the Delegates bought back the last shares in the business.^[28] The press was now owned wholly by the university, with its own paper mill, print shop, bindery, and warehouse. Its output had increased to include school books and modern scholarly texts such as James Clerk Maxwell's A Treatise on Electricity & Magnetism (1873), which proved fundamental to Einstein's thought.^[29] Simply put, without abandoning its traditions or quality of work, Price began to turn OUP into an alert, modern publisher. In 1879, he also took on the publication that led that process to its conclusion: the huge project that became the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).^[30]

Offered to Oxford by James Murray and the Philological Society, the "New English Dictionary" was a grand academic and patriotic undertaking. Lengthy negotiations led to a formal contract. Murray was to edit a work estimated to take 10 years and to cost approximately £9,000.^[31] Both figures were wildly optimistic. The Dictionary began to appear in print in 1884, but the first edition was not completed until 1928, 13 years after Murray's death, at a cost of around £375,000.^[32] This vast financial burden and its implications landed on Price's successors.^{[citation needed]}

The next Secretary, Philip Lyttelton Gell, was appointed by the Vice-Chancellor Benjamin Jowett in 1884 but struggled and was finally dismissed in 1897.^[33] The Assistant Secretary, Charles Cannan, took over with little fuss and even less affection for his predecessor: "Gell was always here, but I cannot make out what he did."^[34] Charles Cannan, who had been instrumental in Gell's removal, succeeded Gell in 1898.

By the early 20th century OUP expanded its overseas trade. The 1920s saw skyrocketing prices of both materials and labour. Paper especially was hard to come by, and had to be imported from South America through trading companies. Economies and markets slowly recovered as the 1920s progressed. In 1928, the press's imprint read 'London, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leipzig, Toronto, Melbourne, Cape Town, Bombay, Calcutta, Madras and Shanghai'. Not all of these were full-fledged branches: in Leipzig there was a depot run by H. Bohun Beet, and in Canada and Australia there were small, functional depots in the cities and an army of educational representatives penetrating the rural fastnesses to sell the press's stock as well as books published by firms whose agencies were held by the press, very often including fiction and light reading. In India, the Branch depots in Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta were imposing establishments with sizable stock inventories, for the Presidencies themselves were large markets, and the educational representatives there dealt mostly with upcountry trade. The Depression of 1929 dried profits from the Americas to a trickle, and India became 'the one bright spot' in an otherwise dismal picture. Bombay was the nodal point for distribution to the Africas and onward sale to Australasia, and people who trained at the three major depots moved later on to pioneer branches in Africa and South East Asia.^[35]

In 1923 OUP established a Music Department.^[36] At the time, such musical publishing enterprises, however, were rare.^[37] and few of the Delegates or former Publishers were themselves musical or had extensive music backgrounds.^{[citation needed]} OUP bought an Anglo-French Music Company and all its facilities, connections, and resources.^[38] This concentration provided OUP two mutually reinforcing benefits: a niche in music publishing unoccupied by potential competitors, and a branch of music performance and composition that the English themselves had largely neglected. Hinnells proposes that the early Music Department's "mixture of scholarship and cultural nationalism" in an area of music with largely unknown commercial prospects was driven by its sense of cultural philanthropy (given the press's academic background) and a desire to promote "national music outside the German mainstream."^[39] It was not until 1939 that the Music Department showed its first profitable year.^[40]

The period following World War II saw consolidation in the face of the breakup of the Empire and the post-war reorganization of the Commonwealth.

In the 1960s OUP Southern Africa started publishing local authors, for the general reader, but also for schools and universities, under its Three Crowns Books imprint. Its territory includes Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland and Namibia, as well as South Africa, the biggest market of the five.^{[citation needed]} OUP Southern Africa is now one of the three biggest educational publishers in South Africa, and focuses its attention on publishing textbooks, dictionaries, atlases and supplementary material for schools, and textbooks for universities. Its author base is overwhelmingly local, and in 2008 it entered into a partnership with the university to support scholarships for South Africans studying postgraduate degrees.^{[citation needed]}

Today the North American branch in New York City is primarily a distribution branch to facilitate the sale of Oxford Bibles in the United States. It also handles marketing of all books of its parent, Macmillan. By the end of 2021, OUP USA has published eighteen Pulitzer Prize–winning books.^[41]

Operations in South Asia and East and South East Asia were and, in the case of the former, remain major parts of the company.

In July 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic its Bookshop on the High Street closed.

On 27 August 2021, OUP closed Oxuniprint, its printing division. The closure will mark the "final chapter" of OUP's centuries-long history of printing.^[42]

Museum

The Oxford University Press Museum is located on Great Clarendon Street, Oxford. Visits must be booked in advance and are led by a member of the archive staff. Displays include a 19th-century printing press, the OUP buildings, and the printing and history of the Oxford Almanack, Alice in Wonderland and the Oxford English Dictionary.^{[citation needed]}

Clarendon Press

OUP came to be known as "(The) Clarendon Press" when printing moved from the Sheldonian Theatre to the Clarendon Building in Broad Street in 1713. The name continued to be used when OUP moved to its present site in Oxford in 1830. The label "Clarendon Press" took on a new meaning when OUP began publishing books through its London office in the early 20th century. To distinguish the two offices, London books were labelled "Oxford University Press" publications, while those from Oxford were labelled "Clarendon Press" books. This labeling ceased in the 1970s, when the London office of OUP closed. Today, OUP reserves "Clarendon Press" as an imprint for Oxford publications of particular academic importance.^[43]

Scholarly journals

OUP as Oxford Journals has also been a major publisher of academic journals, both in the sciences and the humanities; as of 2022^[update] it publishes more than 500 journals on behalf of learned societies around the world.^[44] It has been noted as one of the first university presses to publish an open access journal (Nucleic Acids Research), and probably the first to introduce Hybrid open access journals, offering "optional open access" to authors to allow all readers online access to their paper without charge.^[45] The "Oxford Open" model applies to the majority of their journals.^[46] The OUP is a member of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association.^[47]

Series and titles

 

Seven of the twenty volumes of the Oxford English Dictionary (second edition, 1989)

Oxford University Press publishes a variety of dictionaries (e.g.Oxford English Dictionary, Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, Compact Oxford English Dictionary, Compact Editions of the Oxford English Dictionary, Compact Oxford English Dictionary of Current English, Concise Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford Dictionary of Marketing, Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary, English as a second or foreign language resources (e.g. Let's Go), English language exams (e.g. Oxford Test of English and the Oxford Placement Test), bibliographies (e.g.Oxford Bibliographies Online^[48]), books on indology, music, classics, literature, history, bibles and atlases.

Clarendon Scholarships

Since 2001, Oxford University Press has financially supported the Clarendon bursary, a University of Oxford graduate scholarship scheme.^[49]

Controversies

Tehran Book Fair Controversy

In February 1989, Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa urging the execution of British author Salman Rushdie, and of all involved in the publication of his novel The Satanic Verses. Rushdie went into hiding, and there began an international movement to boycott book trading with Iran. There was therefore outrage when in April 1989 OUP broke the world-wide embargo and chose to attend the Tehran Book Fair. OUP justified this with the statement that "We deliberated about it quite deeply but felt it certainly wasn't in our interests, or Iran's as a whole, to stay away."^[50] The New York Times,^[51] International Herald Tribune and the Sunday Times^[52] all condemned Oxford's decision.

Malcolm vs Oxford University 1986-1992

In 1990 in the UK Court of Appeal author Andrew Malcolm won a landmark legal judgment against Oxford University (Press) for its breach of a contract to publish his philosophical text Making Names. Reporting on the verdict in The Observer, Laurence Marks wrote, "It is the first time in living memory that Grub Street has won such a victory over its oppressors".^[53]. The case ended in July 1992 with a Tomlin order, a damages settlement under the terms of which the servants and agents of Oxford University are permanently barred from denigrating Malcolm or Making Names, rendering it the first book in literary history to be afforded such legal protection.^[54][55][56]The case was reported to have cost Oxford over £500,000.^[57]

Closure of Poetry List

In November 1998, the OUP announced the closure, on commercial grounds, of its modern poetry list. Andrew Potter, OUP's director of music, trade paperbacks and Bibles, told the Times that the list "just about breaks even. The university expects us to operate on commercial grounds, especially in this day and age."^[58] In the same article, the poet D.J.Enright, who had been with OUP since 1979 said, "There was no warning. It was presented as a fait accompli. Even the poetry editor didn't know....The money involved is peanuts. It's a good list, built up over many years."^[58] In February 1999, Arts Minister Alan Howarth made a speech in Oxford in which he denounced the closure: "OUP is not merely a business. It is a department of the University of Oxford and has charitable status. It is part of a great university, which the Government supports financially and which exists to develop and transmit our intellectual culture....It is a perennial complaint by the English faculty that the barbarians are at the gate. Indeed they always are. But we don't expect the gatekeepers themselves, the custodians, to be barbarians."^[59] Oxford's professor Valentine Cunningham, in the THES, wrote, "Increasingly, (OUP) has behaved largely like a commercial outfit, with pound signs in its eyes and a readiness to dumb down for the sake of popularity and sales....Sacking poets not because they lose money but because they do not make enough of it: it is an allegory of a university press missing the point, mistaking its prime purpose."^[60] A decade later, OUP's managing director, Ivon Asquith, reflected on the public relations damage caused by the episode: "If I had foreseen the self-inflicted wound we would suffer I would not have let the proposal get as far as the Finance Committee."^[61]

Tax Exemption Controversy

Since the 1940s, both OUP and its sister press, the CUP, had made applications to the Inland Revenue for exemption from corporate tax. The first application, by CUP in 1940, was refused "on the ground that, since the Press was printing and publishing for the outside world and not simply for the internal use of the University, the Press's trade went beyond the purpose and objects of the University and (in terms of the Act) was not exercised in the course of the actual carrying out of a primary purpose of the University."^[62] Similar applications by OUP in 1944 and 1950 were also rejected by the Inland Revenue, whose officers repeatedly pointed out that the university presses were in open competition with commercial, tax-liable publishers. In November 1975 CUP's chief executive Geoffrey Cass again applied to the Inland Revenue, and a year later CUP's tax-exemption was quietly conceded.^[63][64] OUP's Chief Executive George Richardson followed suit in 1977 and OUP's tax-exemption was granted in 1978. The decisions were not made public. The issue was only brought to public attention as a result of press interest in OUP, following the poetry list closure controversy.^[60] In 1999, the campaigner Andrew Malcolm published his second book The Remedy, in which he alleged that OUP is in breach of its 1978 tax-exemption conditions. This was reported in a front page article in The Oxford Times, along with OUP's response.^[65]

In March 2001, after a 28-year battle with the Indian tax authorities, OUP lost its tax exemption in India. The Supreme Court ruled that OUP was not tax exempt in the subcontinent "because it does not carry out any university activities there but acts simply as a commercial publisher".^[66] In order to pay off back taxes, owed since the 1970s, OUP was obliged to sell its Mumbai headquarters building, Oxford House. The Bookseller reported that "The case has again raised questions about OUP's status in the UK".^[67] In 2003, Joel Rickett of The Bookseller wrote an article in The Guardian describing the resentment of commercial rivals at OUP's tax exemption. Rickett accurately predicted that the funds which would have been paid in tax were "likely to be used to confirm OUP's dominance by buying up other publishers."^[68](Between 1989 and 2018, OUP bought out over 70 rival book and journal publishers). In 2007, with the new 'public benefit' requirement of the revised Charities Act, the issue was re-examined ^[69] with particular reference to the OUP.^[70] In 2008, CUP's and OUP's privilege was attacked by rival publishers.^{[71] [72]} In 2009 The Guardian invited Andrew Malcolm to write an article on the subject.^[73]

East African Bribery Scandal

In July 2012, the UK's Serious Fraud Office found OUP's branches in Kenya and Tanzania guilty of bribery to obtain school bookselling contracts sponsored by the World Bank. Oxford was fined £1.9 million "in recognition of sums it received which were generated through unlawful conduct" and barred from applying for World Bank-financed projects for three years.^[74]

See also

• Category:Oxford University Press academic journals
• List of Oxford University Press journals
• Hachette
• Hart's Rules for Compositors and Readers at the University Press, Oxford
• List of largest UK book publishers
• Cambridge University Press v. Patton, a copyright infringement suit in which OUP is a plaintiff
• Harvard University Press
• University of Chicago Press
• Edinburgh University Press
• Express Publishing
• Blavatnik School of Government (opened in 2015), opposite the OUP on Walton Street

References

Citations

1. "Secretaries to the Delegates of the Press (1868–present)". Oxford University Press. Retrieved 8 March 2022.
2. "A Short History of Oxford University Press". Oxford University Press. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 29 April 2022.
3. Balter, Michael (16 February 1994). "400 Years Later, Oxford Press Thrives". The New York Times. Retrieved 28 June 2011.
4. "About Oxford University Press". OUP Academic. Retrieved 3 August 2018.
5. "A Brief History of the Press". Cambridge University Press. Retrieved 3 August 2018.
6. Carter p. 137
7. Carter, passim
8. Sutcliffe p. xiv
9. Carter ch. 3
10. Barker p. 11
11. Carter ch. 5
12. Barker p. 22
13. Carter p. 63
14. I.G. Phillip, William Blackstone and the Reform of the Oxford University Press (Oxford, 1957) pp. 45–72
15. Carter, ch. 21
16. Barker p. 41. Sutcliffe pp. 4–5
17. Sutcliffe, pp. 1–2, 12
18. Sutcliffe pp. 39–40, 110–111
19. Sutcliffe p. 6
20. Sutcliffe p. 36
21. Barker pp. 45–47
22. Sutcliffe pp. 19–26
23. Sutcliffe pp. 45–46
24. Sutcliffe pp. 16, 19. 37
25. The Clarendonian, 4, no. 32, 1927, p. 47
26. Sutcliffe pp. 48–53
27. Sutcliffe pp. 89–91
28. Sutcliffe p. 64
29. Barker p. 48
30. Sutcliffe pp. 53–58
31. Sutcliffe pp. 56–57
32. Simon Winchester, The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford, 2003)
33. Sutcliffe pp. 98–107
34. Sutcliffe p. 66
35. Milford's Letterbooks
36. Sutcliffe p. 211
37. Sutcliffe p. 210
38. Sutcliffe p. 211
39. Hinnells p. 8
40. Sutcliffe p. 212
41. "OUP Major Book Awards". OUP Academic. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 6 February 2022.
42. Flood, Alison (9 June 2021). "Oxford University Press to end centuries of tradition by closing its printing arm". The Guardian. Retrieved 9 June 2021.
43. "Oxford University Press website, Archives".
44. "Oxford Journals". OUP. Retrieved 9 June 2022.
45. . Journal of Experimental Botany. Oxford Journals. Archived from the original on 4 December 2008. Retrieved 19 April 2016.
46. . Oxford Journals. Archived from the original on 19 July 2014. Retrieved 19 April 2016.
47. Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association Members
48. "About". Oxfordbibliographies.com.
49. "History of the Clarendon Fund". University of Oxford. Retrieved 12 February 2018.
50. quoted in "Such principled publishers", an article in The Bookseller, 5 May 1989
51. 'Books for the Mullahs', The New York Times, 27th April 1989
52. Norman Lebrecht and Ian Birrell, 'Anger over Iran book fair visits', The Sunday Times, 7th May 1989
53. Laurence Marks, 'A builder's dialogue that silenced OUP', The Observer, 23 December 1990
54. Phil Baty, 'Whistleblowers', The Times Higher Education Supplement, 22 February 2002 '
55. Phil Baty, 'Whistleblowers', THES article on the akmedea website '
56. "Malcolm v Oxford: settlement agreement 1/7/92". www.akmedea.com.
57. Books and Bookmen column, Private Eye, 15 January 1993
58. Dalya Alberge, 'Anger over Dead Poets Society', The Times, 21st November 1998
59. Dan Glaister, 'Minister steps into Oxford poetry list row', The Guardian, 4 February 1999
60. 'Mammon's Imprint', The Times Higher Education Supplement, 12 February 1999
61. Ivon Asquith letter to Roy Foster, quoted by Foster in 'The Poetry Question', Keith Robbins (ed), The History of Oxford University Press, Vol IV, OUP, 2017, p478
62. M.H. Black, Cambridge University Press 1584-1984, CUP, 1984,p267
63. G Bridden, letter to Geoffrey Cass, 9 November 1976
64. M.H. Black, Cambridge University Press 1584-1984, CUP, 1984,p282
65. Reg Little, 'OUP denies it has breached Charity rules', The Oxford Times, 5 November 1999
66. Maggie Hartford 'A Message from India', The Oxford Times, 30 March 2001
67. The Bookseller Editorial team, 'OUP India forced to pay back tax', The Bookseller, 1 June 2001
68. Joel Rickett, 'latest news from the world of publishing', The Guardian, 30 August 2003
69. Jessica Shepherd, 'Freedom of the presses', the Guardian, 17 April 2007
70. Tom Tivnan, 'Charities review could hit publishers', The Bookseller, 2007
71. Philip Jones,'Rivals attack OUP and CUP', The Bookseller, 24 April 2008
72. Chris Koenig, 'OUP status attacked', Oxford Mail, 16 May 2008
73. Andrew Malcolm, 'The Oxford presses aren't charities but are given unfair tax breaks', The Guardian, 15 April 2009
74. Jeevan Vasagar, 'Oxford University Press fined £1.9m over bribery by African subsidiary firms', The Guardian, 3 July 2012

Sources

• Barker, Nicolas (1978). The Oxford University Press and the Spread of Learning. Oxford.
• Carter, Harry Graham (1975). A History of the Oxford University Press. Oxford: Clarendon Press. OCLC 955872307.
• Chatterjee, Rimi B. (2006). Empires of the Mind: A History of the Oxford University Press in India During the Raj. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-567474-3.
• Hinnells, Duncan (1998). An Extraordinary Performance: Hubert Foss and the Early Years of Music Publishing at the Oxford University Press. Oxford: OUP. ISBN 978-0-19-323200-6.
• Oxford Music: The First Fifty Years '23−'73. London: Oxford University Press Music Department. 1973.
• Sutcliffe, Peter (1978). The Oxford University Press: An Informal History. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-951084-9.
• Sutcliffe, Peter (1972). An Informal History of the OUP. Oxford: OUP.

Further reading

• Gadd, Ian, ed. (2014). The History of Oxford University Press: Volume I: Beginnings to 1780. Oxford: OUP. ISBN 9780199557318.
• Eliot, Simon, ed. (2014). The History of Oxford University Press: Volume II: 1780 to 1896. Oxford: OUP. ISBN 9780199543151.
• Louis, Wm. Roger, ed. (2014). The History of Oxford University Press: Volume III: 1896 to 1970. Oxford: OUP. ISBN 9780199568406. Also online doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199568406.001.0001.
• Robbins, Keith, ed. (2017). The History of Oxford University Press: Volume IV: 1970 to 2004. Oxford: OUP. ISBN 9780199574797.

External links

 

Wikisource has original works published by or about: Oxford University Press

 

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• Official website  
• Oxford University Press at the Wayback Machine (archive index)
• Illustrated article: The Most Famous Press in the World, World's Work and Play, June 1903