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A REPUTATION FOR EXCELLENCE
A History of the Glasgow Printing Industry
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Part Two - The University
Interest
Printing cannot be said to have flourished in Glasgow. If one disregards
the possible overlap of a few months between Andrew Anderson and
Robert Sanders in 1661 and the mysterious Andrew Hepburn who in
1689 printed The Later Proceedings and Votes of The Parliament of
Scotland, there was never more than one printer at work in the city
until the second decade of the eighteenth century. The University,
therefore, in seeking a replacement for Robert Sanders the younger,
apparently felt it necessary to look outside the trade. In 1713
negotiations were entered into with one Thomas Harvie, a student
of Divinity, but, these having fallen through, an agreement was
reached with Donald Govan, a merchant in the City, who was officially
appointed ‘Printer to the University’ in 1715. In the
year before Govan’s appointment was confirmed, however, there
appeared four pamphlets printed by a certain Hugh Brown, one of
which was stated to have been printed in the University and the
others describing Brown as printer to the University. The fourth
of these, The Jacobite Curse, a pamphlet of political intent, brought
an immediate denial of Brown. He was, it was said, never printer
to the University but only employed by Donald Govan who for some
months past had been allowed to print within the University. Govan
denied all knowledge of the pamphlet. Brown continued to print under
his own name until 1720. Govan’s career as a printer was a
short one — he was not known to have printed after 1718 —
but he does have the distinction of having printed Glasgow’s
first newspaper. Originally The Glasgow Courant, the title was changed
after three issues to The West-Country Intelligence. In all, there
were 67 issues between November 1715 and May 1716. It contained
little Glasgow news.
In the next twenty years the University made occasional attempts
to find a suitable printer. Thomas Crawford, who in 1721 printed
an edition of Napthali, or The Wrestlings of The Church of Scotland,
almost certainly printed in the University, and when Alexander Carmichael
& Co. printed a second edition of A believer’s mortification
of sin by the spirit in 1730 the place of publication was given
as ‘Glasgow College’.
Frances Hutcheson’s inaugural address, printed in the same
year with the imprint ‘Typis Academicis’, is certainly
from the same press. There were other books with the same imprint
in the years following. It would seem that Carmichael, though never
officially appointed printer, did occasional work for the University
as did his partner Alexander Miller after Carmichael left the partnership
in 1737. Carmichael had university connections. He was the son of
Gerschom Carmichael, Professor of Moral Philosophy in Glasgow, and
may have been the Alexander Carmichael who was Librarian to the
University from 1727 to 1735.
In 1738, 100 years after the establishment of printing in Glasgow,
there were still no more than three printers in the city Alexander
Miller, the remaining partner of Alexander Carmichael & Co.,
and William and James Duncan. The Duncans had set up a partnership
in 1718 but, by 1720, they were printing separately. The books which
they produced were, in the main, the popular religious tracts of
the day, and both remained ‘in business until the 1760s, which
argues a fair measure of success. James Duncan was the more enterprising
of the two. In addition to being a printer and
bookseller he was also a type-founder and paper manufacturer. McUre’s
History of Glasgow, which he published in 1736, is said to have
been printed with his own type. The mills on the Kelvin which he
acquired for the manufacture of snuff, oil and paper were still
in the Duncan family’s possession in 1800. He was for many
years a printer of Gaelic works, not always to the satisfaction
of the Provincial Synod of Argyll which, on his proposing A Highland
New Testament and Psalm Book in 1752, opposed it, complaining of
‘gross errors’ in previous editions.
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Volume 2 published 1994
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