Oxford University Press is one of the oldest and best-known publishing houses in the world. This history, originally published to mark 500 years of printing in Oxford, traces the transformation of the Press from a lucrative Bible house into a great national and international publishing business. Great names in the early history of the Press, like Laud, Fell, and Blackstone, laid sound foundations, but as late as 1870 it was thought necessary to remind the Delegates
that publishing books was not 'entirely beside their function'. Even in the 1890s there were still those prepared to censure the University for allowing its Press to publish the secular and profane
literature of Spenser, Marlowe, and Shakespeare.