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A REPUTATION FOR EXCELLENCE
A History of the Glasgow Printing Industry
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Part Four - The Era of
Industrialisation
It was 1811 before the University appointed Andrew Duncan as their
printer. This appointment continued until 1827 (with his son John
Morrison in partnership 1820—5 when John died at the age of
thirty) when Andrew Duncan resigned because of financial losses
caused in association with several London publishers. The University
did not hurry to replace the well-respected Andrew Duncan, who during
his time as University Printer had erected the Villafield Press
in the heart of the city in 1818. This was then all on one floor
and was gradually extended by 1826. The firm did not lack in enterprise.
John introduced ‘The Columbian Press’ into Villafield.
It would print at one time a surface of 54 x 39 inches, twice the
size of the largest newspaper. The University Press also introduced
stereotyping into their works at this time. Timberley in his Typographical
Anecdote mentions that in 1816 the Bibles issued from the Glasgow
University Printing Office numbered 200,000 along with 2,500,000
other books and tracts. Reports say that because of the eminence
to which Andrew Duncan raised the University Press he might be entitled
to be called the father of fine printing in the west of Scotland.
The high standard of the splendid editions produced earlier by the
Foulis brothers disappeared until Duncan began as printer.
Blackie & Son began when John Blackie set up in 1809 a partnership
with Archibald Fullerton and William Sommerville as publishers and
booksellers (before this, in 1808, John Blackie had come to an arrangement
with booksellers A. & W.D. Brownlie, with whom he had been employed,
to take over their business). Printer Edward Khull was invited to
join them and made a partner later in 1819. This partnership flourished
in premises ranging from Black Boy Close in 1811 to 37 Queen Street
by 1826. Khull left the partnership in 1826 and set up on his own
as a printer in Clyde Street. The partnership dissolved in 1831
when Blackie & Son became a separate entity.
The ‘Number’ trade, taken over from the Brownlies, formed
a major part of the work of Blackie. Books in paperbound sections
called ‘Numbers’ were sold by subscription and made available
section by section to subscribers. In these uncomplicated days of
small beginnings John Blackie did most of the travelling himself
up and down the country. The town crier warned people in advance
of his arrival. Agnes Blackie says in her book Blackie & Son
from 1809—1959: ‘As sections were moderately priced, and
could be paid for one by one, the “Number” trade also
served to put books within the financial reach of relatively poor
people, and had therefore a social impact, on the mental plane,
comparable to that of hire purchase on the material plane today.’
Except in larger towns, bookshops were rare and almost unknown at
the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Although the ‘Number’ trade formed a significant amount
of Blackie’s production for sixty years, the firm was also
known for other major book productions. Family Bibles were in great
demand at home and in remote foreign parts. Before the General Registration
Act, the entry of births and deaths in the Family Bible constituted
a record that could be produced and accepted as evidence in a court
of law and Blackie became well known as a publisher of these, and
other, Bibles.
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Volume 2 published 1994
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