OXFORD PRESS TO OPEN N.Z. BRANCH

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 400, 21 February 1947, Page 20

OXFORD PRESS TO OPEN N.Z. BRANCH

the production of school-books, dictionaries and essential textbooks was set back from five to six years. And that shortage was aggravated further by the British Government monopolising the Clarendon Press for publication of books connected with the war effort. No rapid . return to pre-war speed of production "TP tora the recent war,

can be expect-d for some time, but publishers are doing their best to meet demands. , That was as.much as could be said about, present production by R. C. Gooderidge, of the Oxford University Press, who has come to Wellington to rstablish the first new branch since one was opened at Capetown in 1915. Early last year David Fullerton, overseas sales manager of the Oxford University Press, called on The Listener, and at the end of the year, C. E. Carrington, cducational manager of the Cambridge University Press, looked in to see us. Between those two visits, the University of New Zealand made its. first move towards ¢stablishing a University Press. "The whole idea of.a New Zealand branch started from a thought, but only" after many months of planning cid the idea begin to take shape,’ Mr. Gooderidge told us’in an interview. "The preliminary arrangements, n‘cessary forerunners to a new enterprise, tended to hecome anxious days of waiting. But after some false alarms about departure Gates, the British Overseas Airways Corporation people gave me 24 hours’ notice to start a flight of half-way round the world.) * Started on the subject of books, he said that the Oxford University Press. which started publishing in 1478, was a department of the University of Oxford. and was controlled by a University committee (the Del-gates of the, Press. whose chairman is ex officio the ViceChancellor for the time being), and administered by a hierarchy of officials appginted by that committee. The Press was not a company and had_ no sharc-

holders. All profits were used for the publication of books of intrinsic value which had not a sufficiently wide sale to support themselves. The present secretary to the delegates was Kenneth Sisam (whose Fourteenth Century Verse and Prose is familiar to many. New Zealand University students), and under him was the editorial and production department, known as the Clarendon Press, which produced the learned works and educational books, from the great Oxford Dictionary to readers for infant schools. ; No Commercial Rivalry "The Clarendon Press and Oxford Press are two branches of the same concern. The Oxford Press, which attends to distribution was one of the few buildings near St. Paul’s to escape almost undamaged by enemy bombs. Some incendiaries fell on the roof but the fire service was in the building at the tim, and so little harm was done." Mr. Gooderidge emphasised that the Cambridge and Oxford Présses were two University departments rather than commercial rivals. "What percentage of submitted work sees publication?" "About one per cent. Wé receive a lot of stuff that is quite unsuitable; novels and so on." "With so much of your work diverted to Government requirements during the war, how did schools fare?" "Not very well; many of them were unable to replace text-books. They are now clamouring for supplies, and we are doing our best to meet their demands." Before the war, Mr. Gooderidge said, the Oxford University Press listed 10,000 different titles in its catalogue. "What are the outstanding single works published by the Press?" "Cresswell’s Early Muslim Arckitecture, A. U. Pope’s Survey of Persian Art, the revised cdition of Liddell and Scott’s Greek Lexicon, Sir Paul Harvey’s Oxford Companion to English Literature, Percy Scholes’s Oxford Companion to Music, The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, which has been described as ‘the world’s best bedside book,’ Arnold Toynbre’s Study of History, and the many editions of such widely use* hymnals as The English Hymnal, Songs of Praise and The Church Hymnary." A Million Pounds of Metal * "At what time did the University printing house expand most?" , "Under the last three printers to the University: Horace Hart, Fred-rick Hall and Dr. John Johnson. It was estimated a few years ago that the total quantity of type at the Press was more than a million pounds’ weight of metal. It included some 550 different founts in 150 different charact-rs, ranging from hieroglyphics and prehistoric Minoan characters, te the phonetic scripts of Sweet and Passy, and including Sanskrit, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Syriac, Ethiopic, Amharic, Coptic, Armenian, Chinese, Tibetan, Burmese, Sinhalese, Tamil, Gothic, and Cyrillic. Charles Batey became the printer in 1946." One outstanding project was the publication. of the Oxford Pamphlets on World Affairs, starting with Sir Alfred Zimmern’s The Prospects of Civilisation, and three other pamphlets, in July, (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) 1939, said Mt. Gooderidge. Almost six m._llion copies of the ‘pamphlets had been sold, and translated into many languages. : Clamotr for Printing Now that its members had returned from the Services, the Press-its London offices riow inhabited after war-time is Sa an a busy time. "Hunof books cry out to be reprinted, all the time the Press has its obligation to keep in print, as far as it can under paper rationing and other production difficulties, the many standard books on all subjects on which the specialist, the student, and the general reader rely." Mr. Gooderidge has been on the staff of the Press for 20 years, with the exception of five-and-a-half years when he was in the Royal Army Pay Corps, dodging bombs and handling millions of pounds in a bell tent. His wife (who was also.a member of the Press staff for some years) and his family will come to New Zealand next month. > "There’s one thing I would like you to mention if you have space, and that is that there need be no misapprehension about Britain going short of food to help feed Germany. We are doing just that, and we are doing it because we regard it as our duty, for the Englishman likes to ‘do the decent thing.’ And the result is that there is nothing much to liven up the dreary daily diet. __-_-_-eeoee eee

Parcels from New Zealand are vastly ‘appreciated, and would be even more so if fats for cooking were always included. Sometimes there are mistaken ideas about Lord Mayors’ banquets. People conjure up visions of feasting: I can tell you that a so-called banquet to-day is nothing of the sort. It’s generally nothing more than some staple thing like mtncty. with a little wine for variety."