The Evolution of Cambridge Publishing

4to (25.5 cm), IX, 67 pp., 14 plates. Publisher's cloth and dust jacket (dj lightly foxed and stained, with a small tear at the head; bookplate). First edition, comprising the published text of Roberts's Sandars Lectures in Bibliography, delivered in 1954. S. C. Roberts, Master of Pembroke College and formerly Secretary to the Syndics of the Cambridge University Press, traces the development of the Press's publishing activities in three lectures. "The Bentley Revival" examines the Press's earliest venture into publishing proper and the direction of its affairs by Richard Bentley in the early eighteenth century, including new material concerning the publication of the Suidas Lexicon. "After the Royal Commission" traces the emergence of a modern publishing firm in nineteenth-century Cambridge, the development of a London branch, advertising practices, and the management of the backlist. "The Twentieth Century" opens with the eleventh edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and follows the typographical revival associated with Bruce Rogers, Stanley Morison, and Walter Lewis, covering the period during which Roberts himself served as Secretary to the Syndics and consequently providing a valuable first-hand account of the Press's twentieth-century development. An important institutional history of Cambridge University Press, particularly useful for collectors of its imprints and for students of the history of British publishing and the book trade.…