Oxford University Press Oxford University Press ( OUP ) is the largest university press in the world . It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice - Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press . They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates , who serves as OUP ' s chief executive and as its major representative on other university bodies . Oxford University has used a similar system to oversee the Press since the 17th century . The university became involved in the print trade around 1480 , and grew into a major printer of Bibles , prayer books , and scholarly works . Its Press took on the project that became the " Oxford English Dictionary " in the late 19th century , and expanded to meet the ever - rising costs of the work . As a result , the last hundred years has seen Oxford publish children ' s books , school text books , music , journals , the World ' s Classics series , and a best - selling range of English Language Teaching texts to match its academic and religious titles . Moves into international markets led to the Press opening its own offices outside the United Kingdom , beginning with New York in 1896 . With the advent of computer technology and increasingly harsh trading conditions , the Press ' s printing house at Oxford was closed in 1989 , and its former paper mill at Wolvercote was demolished in 2004 . By contracting out its printing and binding operations , the modern Press publishes some 6 , 000 new titles around the world each year . As part of a charitable organization , OUP is committed to major financial support of its parent university , and furthers the university ' s aims of excellence in scholarship , research , and education through its publishing activities . OUP was first exempted from US Corporation Tax in 1972 and from UK Corporation Tax in 1978 . As a department of a charity , OUP is exempt from income tax and corporate tax in most countries , but may pay sales and other commercial taxes on its products . The Press today transfers 30 % of its annual surplus to the rest of the University , with a commitment to a minimum transfer of £12 million per annum . OUP is the largest university press in the world by the number of publications , publishing more than 4 , 500 new books every year and employing some 4 , 000 people . OUP publishes many reference , professional , and academic works including the " Oxford English Dictionary " , the " Concise Oxford English Dictionary " , the Oxford World ' s Classics , the " Oxford Dictionary of National Biography " , and the " Concise Dictionary of National Biography " . A number of its most important titles are now available electronically in a package called " Oxford Reference Online " , and are offered free to holders of a reader ' s card or other subscribing institutions ( e . g . , universities , colleges , etc . ) worldwide . Books published by Oxford have International Standard Book Numbers that begin with 0 - 19 , making the Press one of a tiny number of publishers who have two - digit identification numbers in the ISBN system . By internal agreement , the first digit of the individual edition number ( following 0 - 19 - ) can indicate a particular originating division , for example : 3 for music ( before ISMN s were defined ) ; 5 for the New York office ; 8 for Clarendon Press publications . Oxford University Press Museum . The Oxford University Press Museum is located on Great Clarendon Street , Oxford . Visits must be booked in advance and are led by a member of the archive staff . Displays include a 19th century printing press , the OUP buildings , and the printing and history of the Oxford Almanack , Alice in Wonderland and the Oxford English Dictionary . Early history . The first printer associated with Oxford University was Theoderic Rood . A business associate of William Caxton , Rood seems to have brought his own wooden printing press to Oxford from Cologne as a speculative venture , and to have worked in the city between around 1480 and 1483 . The first book printed in Oxford , in 1478 , an edition of Rufinus ' s " Expositio in symbolum apostolorum " , was printed by another , anonymous , printer . Famously , this was mis - dated in Roman numerals as " 1468 " , thus apparently pre - dating Caxton . Rood ' s printing included John Ankywyll ' s " Compendium totius grammaticae , " which set new standards for teaching of Latin grammar . After Rood , printing connected with the University remained sporadic for over half a century . Records or surviving work are few , and Oxford did not put its printing on a firm footing until the 1580s : this followed the efforts of Cambridge University , which had obtained a license for its press in 1534 . In response to constraints on printing outside London imposed by the Crown and the Stationers ' Company , Oxford petitioned Elizabeth I for the formal right to operate a press at the university . The Chancellor Robert Dudley , Earl of Leicester pleaded Oxford ' s case . Some royal assent was obtained , since the printer Joseph Barnes began work , and a decree of Star Chamber noted the legal existence of a press at " the universitie of Oxforde " in 1586 . 17th century : William Laud & John Fell . Oxford ' s Chancellor Archbishop William Laud consolidated the legal status of the university ' s printing in the 1630s . Laud envisaged a unified Press of world standing . Oxford would establish it on university property , govern its operations , employ its staff , determine its printed work , and benefit from its proceeds . To that end , he petitioned Charles I for rights that would enable Oxford to compete with the Stationers ' Company and the King ' s Printer , and obtained a succession of royal grants to aid it . These were brought together in Oxford ' s " Great Charter " in 1636 , which gave the university the right to print " all manner of books . " Laud also obtained the " privilege " from the Crown of printing the King James or Authorized Version of Scripture at Oxford . This " privilege " created substantial returns in the next 250 years , although initially it was held in abeyance . The Stationers ' Company was deeply alarmed by the threat to its trade , and lost little time in establishing a " Covenant of Forbearance " with Oxford . Under this , the Stationers paid an annual rent for the university not to exercise its full printing rights – money Oxford used to purchase new printing equipment for smaller purposes . Laud also made progress with internal organization of the Press . Besides establishing the system of Delegates , he created the wide - ranging supervisory post of " Architypographus " : an academic who would have responsibility for every function of the business , from print shop management to proofreading . The post was more an ideal than a workable reality , but it survived ( mostly as a sinecure ) in the loosely structured Press until the 18th century . In practice , Oxford ' s Warehouse - Keeper dealt with sales , accounting , and the hiring and firing of print shop staff . Laud ' s plans , however , hit terrible obstacles , both personal and political . Falling foul of political intrigue , he was executed in 1645 , by which time the English Civil War had broken out . Oxford became a Royalist stronghold during the conflict , and many printers in the city concentrated on producing political pamphlets or sermons . Some outstanding mathematical and Orientalist works emerged at this time – notably , texts edited by Edward Pococke , the Regius Professor of Hebrew – but no university press on Laud ' s model was possible before the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660 . It was finally established by the Vice - Chancellor John Fell , Dean of Christ Church , Bishop of Oxford , and Secretary to the Delegates . Fell regarded Laud as a martyr , and was determined to honour his vision of the Press . Using the provisions of the Great Charter , Fell persuaded Oxford to refuse any further payments from the Stationers and drew all printers working for the university onto one set of premises . This business was set up in the cellars of the new Sheldonian Theatre , where Fell installed printing presses in 1668 , making it the university ' s first central print shop . A type foundry was added when Fell acquired a large stock of typographical punches and matrices from the Dutch Republic – the so - called " Fell Types " . He also induced two Dutch typefounders , Harman Harmanz and Peter de Walpergen , to work in Oxford for the Press . Finally , defying the Stationers ' demands , Fell personally leased the right to print from the university in 1672 , in partnership with Thomas Yate , Principal of Brasenose , and Sir Leoline Jenkins , Principal of Jesus College . Fell ' s scheme was ambitious . Besides plans for academic and religious works , in 1674 he began to print a broadsheet calendar , known as the Oxford Almanack . Early editions featured symbolic views of Oxford , but in 1766 these gave way to realistic studies of the city or university . The Almanacks have been produced annually without interruption from Fell ' s time to the present day . Following the start of this work , Fell drew up the first formal programme for the university ' s printing . Dating from 1675 , this document envisaged hundreds of works , including the Bible in Greek , editions of the Coptic Gospels and works of the Church Fathers , texts in Arabic and Syriac , comprehensive editions of classical philosophy , poetry , and mathematics , a wide range of medieval scholarship , and also " a history of insects , more perfect than any yet Extant . " Though few of these proposed titles appeared during Fell ' s life , bible printing remained at the forefront of his mind . A full variant Greek text of Scripture proved impossible , but in 1675 Oxford printed a quarto King James edition , carrying Fell ' s own textual changes and spellings . This work only provoked further conflict with the Stationers ' Company . In retaliation , Fell leased the university ' s bible printing to three rogue Stationers , Moses Pitt , Peter Parker , and Thomas Guy , whose sharp commercial instincts proved vital to fomenting Oxford ' s bible trade . Their involvement , however , led to a protracted legal battle between Oxford and the Stationers , and the litigation dragged on for the rest of Fell ' s life . He died in 1686 . 18th century : The Clarendon Building and Blackstone . Yate and Jenkins predeceased Fell , leaving him with no obvious heir to oversee the print shop . As a result , his will left the partners ' stock and lease in trust to Oxford University , and charged them with keeping together " my founding Materialls of the Press . " Fell ' s main trustee was the Delegate Henry Aldrich , Dean of Christ Church , who took a keen interest in the decorative work of Oxford ' s books . He and his colleagues presided over the end of Parker and Guy ' s lease , and a new arrangement in 1691 whereby the Stationers leased the whole of Oxford ' s printing privilege , including its unsold scholarly stock . Despite violent opposition from some printers in the Sheldonian , this ended the friction between Oxford and the Stationers , and marked the effective start of a stable university printing business . In 1713 , Aldrich also oversaw the Press moving to the Clarendon Building . This was named in honour of Oxford University ' s Chancellor , Edward Hyde , 1st Earl of Clarendon . Oxford lore maintained its construction was funded by proceeds from his book * " The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England " ( 1702 – 04 ) . In fact , most of the money came from Oxford ' s new bible printer John Baskett – and the Vice - Chancellor William Delaune defaulted with much of the proceeds from Clarendon ' s work . In any event , the result was Nicholas Hawksmoor ' s beautiful but impractical structure beside the Sheldonian in Broad Street . The Press worked here until 1830 , with its operations split into the so - called Learned Side and Bible Side in different wings of the building . Generally , speaking , the early 18th century marked a lull in the Press ' s expansion . It suffered from the absence of any figure comparable to Fell , and its history was marked by ineffectual or fractious individuals such as the Architypographus and antiquary Thomas Hearne , and the flawed project of Baskett ' s first bible , a gorgeously designed volume strewn with misprints , and known as the Vinegar Bible after a glaring typographical error in St . Luke . Other printing during this period included Richard Allestree ' s contemplative texts , and Thomas Hanmer ' s 6 - volume edition of Shakespeare , ( 1743 – 4 ) . In retrospect , these proved relatively minor triumphs . They were products of a university press that had come to embody increasing muddle , decay , and corrupt practice , and relied increasingly on leasing of its bible and prayer book work to survive . The business was rescued by the intervention of a single Delegate , William Blackstone . Disgusted by the chaotic state of the Press , and antagonized by the Vice - Chancellor George Huddesford , Blackstone subjected the print shop to close scrutiny , but his findings on its confused organization and sly procedures met with only " gloomy and contemptuous silence " from his colleagues , or " at best with a languid indifference . " In disgust , Blackstone forced the university to confront its responsibilities by publishing a lengthy letter he had written to Huddesford ' s successor , Thomas Randolph in May 1757 . Here , Blackstone characterized the Press as an inbred institution that had given up all pretence of serving scholarship , " languishing in a lazy obscurity . . . a nest of imposing mechanics . " To cure this disgraceful state of affairs , Blackstone called for sweeping reforms that would firmly set out the Delegates ' powers and obligations , officially record their deliberations and accounting , and put the print shop on an efficient footing . Nonetheless , Randolph ignored ths document , and it was not until Blackstone threatened legal action that changes began . The university had moved to adopt all of Blackstone ' s reforms by 1760 . By the late 18th century , the Press had become more focussed . Early copyright law had begun to undercut the Stationers , and the university took pains to lease out its bible work to experienced printers . When the American War of Independence deprived Oxford of a valuable market for its bibles , this lease became too risky a proposition , and the Delegates were forced to offer shares in the Press to those who could take " the care and trouble of managing the trade for our mutual advantage . " Forty - eight shares were issued , with the university holding a controlling interest . At the same time , classical scholarship revived , with works by Jeremiah Markland and Peter Elmsley , as well as early 19th century texts edited by a growing number of academics from mainland Europe – perhaps the most prominent being August Immanuel Bekker and Karl Wilhelm Dindorf . Both prepared editions at the invitation of the Greek scholar Thomas Gaisford , who served as a Delegate for 50 years . During his time , the growing Press established distributors in London , and employed the bookseller Joseph Parker in Turl Street for the same purposes in Oxford . Parker also came to hold shares in the Press itself . This expansion pushed the Press out of the Clarendon building . In 1825 the Delegates bought land in Walton Street . Buildings were constructed from plans drawn up by Daniel Robertson and Edward Blore , and the Press moved into them in 1830 . This site remains the main office of OUP in the 21st century , at the corner of Walton Street and Great Clarendon Street , north - west of Oxford city centre . 19th century : Price and Cannan . The Press now entered an era of enormous change . In 1830 , it was still a joint stock printing business in an academic backwater , offering learned works to a relatively small readership of scholars and clerics . The Press was the product of " a society of shy hypochondriacs , " as one historian put it . Its trade relied on mass sales of cheap bibles , and its Delegates were typified by Gaisford or Martin Routh . They were long - serving classicists , presiding over a learned business that printed 5 or 10 titles each year , such as Liddell and Scott ' s " Greek - English Lexicon " ( 1843 ) , and they displayed little or no desire to expand its trade . Steam power for printing must have seemed an unsettling departure in the 1830s . At this time , Thomas Combe joined the Press and became the university ' s Printer until his death in 1872 . Combe was a better business man than most Delegates , but still no innovator : he failed to grasp the huge commercial potential of India paper , which grew into one of Oxford ' s most profitable trade secrets in later years . Even so , Combe earned a fortune through his shares in the business and the acquisition and renovation of the bankrupt paper mill at Wolvercote . He funded schooling at the Press and the endowment of St . Barnabas Church in Oxford . Combe ' s wealth also extended to becoming the first patron of the Pre - Raphaelite Brotherhood , and he and his wife Martha bought most of the group ' s early work , including " The Light of the World " by William Holman Hunt . Combe showed little interest , however , in producing fine printed work at the Press . The most well - known text associated with his print shop was the flawed first edition of " Alice ' s Adventures in Wonderland " , printed by Oxford at the expense of its author Lewis Carroll ( Charles Lutwidge Dodgson ) in 1865 . It took the 1850 Royal Commission on the workings of the university and a new Secretary , Bartholomew Price , to shake up the Press . Appointed in 1868 , Price had already recommended to the university that the Press needed an efficient executive officer to exercise " vigilant superintendence " of the business , including its dealings with Alexander Macmillan , who became the publisher for Oxford ' s printing in 1863 and in 1866 helped Price to create the Clarendon Press series of cheap , elementary schoolbooks – perhaps the first time that Oxford used the Clarendon imprint . Under Price , the Press began to take on its modern shape . By 1865 the Delegacy had ceased to be ' perpetual , ' and evolved into five perpetual and five junior posts filled by appointment from the University , with the Vice Chancellor a Delegate ex officio : a hothouse for factionalism that Price deftly tended and controlled . The university bought back shares as their holders retired or died . Accounts ' supervision passed to the newly created Finance Committee in 1867 . Major new lines of work began . To give one example , in 1875 , the Delegates approved the series " Sacred Books of the East " under the editorship of Friedrich Max Müller , bringing a vast range of religious thought to a wider readership . Equally , Price moved OUP towards publishing in its own right . The Press had ended its relationship with Parker ' s in 1863 and in 1870 bought a small London bindery for some bible work . Macmillan ' s contract ended in 1880 , and wasn ' t renewed . By this time , Oxford also had a London warehouse for bible stock in Paternoster Row , and in 1880 its manager Henry Frowde was given the formal title of Publisher to the University . Frowde came from the book trade , not the university , and remained an enigma to many . " Very few of us here in Oxford had any personal knowledge of him , " admitted one obituary in Oxford ' s staff magazine , " The Clarendonian " . Despite that , Frowde became vital to OUP ' s growth , adding new lines of books to the business , presiding over the massive publication of the Revised Version of the New Testament in 1881 and playing a key role in setting up the Press ' s first office outside Britain , in New York in 1896 . Price transformed OUP . In 1884 , the year he retired as Secretary , the Delegates bought back the last shares in the business . The Press was now owned wholly by the university , with its own paper mill , print shop , bindery and warehouse . Its output had increased to include school books and modern scholarly texts such as James Clerk Maxwell ' s " A Treatise on Electricity & Magnetism " ( 1873 ) , which proved fundamental to Einstein ' s thought . Simply put , without abandoning its traditions or quality of work , Price began to turn OUP into an alert , modern publisher . In 1879 , he also took on the publication that led that process to its conclusion : the huge project that became the " Oxford English Dictionary " ( OED ) . Offered to Oxford by James Murray and the Philological Society , the " New English Dictionary " was a grand academic and patriotic undertaking . Lengthy negotiations led to a formal contract . Murray was to edit a work estimated to take 10 years and to cost approximately £9 , 000 . Both figures were wildly optimistic . The Dictionary began to appear in print in 1884 , but the first edition was not completed until 1928 , 13 years after Murray ' s death , at a cost of around £375 , 000 . This vast financial burden and its implications landed on Price ' s successors . The next Secretary struggled to address this problem . Philip Lyttelton Gell was appointed by the Vice - Chancellor Benjamin Jowett in 1884 . Despite his education at Balliol and a background in London publishing , Gell found the operations of the Press incomprehensible . The Delegates began to work around him , and the university finally dismissed Gell in 1897 . The Assistant Secretary , Charles Cannan , took over with little fuss and even less affection for his predecessor : " Gell was always here , but I cannot make out what he did . " Cannan had little opportunity for public wit in his new role . An acutely gifted classicist , he came to the head of a business that was successful in traditional terms but now moved into uncharted terrain . By themselves , specialist academic works and the undependable bible trade could not meet the rising costs of the Dictionary and Press contributions to the University Chest . To meet these demands , OUP needed much more revenue . Cannan set out to obtain it . Outflanking university politics and inertia , he made Frowde and the London office the financial engine for the whole business . Frowde steered Oxford rapidly into popular literature , acquiring the World ' s Classics in 1906 . The same year saw him enter into a so - called " joint venture " with Hodder & Stoughton to help with the publication of children ' s literature and medical books . Cannan insured continuity to these efforts by appointing his Oxford protégé , the Assistant Secretary Humphrey S . Milford , to be Frowde ' s assistant . Milford became Publisher when Frowde retired in 1913 , and ruled over the lucrative London business and the branch offices that reported to it until his own retirement in 1945 . Given the financial health of the Press , Cannan ceased to regard scholarly books or even the Dictionary as impossible liabilities . " I do not think the University can produce enough books to ruin us , " he remarked . His efforts were helped by the efficiency of the print shop . Horace Hart was appointed as Controller of the Press at the same time as Gell , but proved far more effective than the Secretary . With extraordinary energy and professionalism , he improved and enlarged Oxford ' s printing resources , and developed " Hart ' s Rules " as the first style guide for Oxford ' s proof - readers . Subsequently , these became standard in print shops worldwide . In addition , he suggested the idea for the Clarendon Press Institute , a social club for staff in Walton Street . When the Institute opened in 1891 , the Press had 540 employees eligible to join it , including apprentices . Finally , Hart ' s general interest in printing led to him cataloguing the " Fell Types " , then using them in a series of Tudor and Stuart facsimile volumes for the Press , before ill health led to his death in 1915 . By then , OUP had moved from being a parochial printer into a wide - ranging , university - owned publishing house with a growing international presence . The London business . Frowde had no doubt that the Press ' s business in London could be very largely increased and was appointed on contract with a commission on sales . Seven years later , as Publisher to the University , Frowde was using his own name as an imprint as well as ' Oxford University Press ' . This style persisted till recent times , with two kinds of imprints emanating from the Press ' s London offices . The last man known as ' Publisher to the University ' was John Gilbert Newton Brown , known to his colleagues as ' Bruno ' . The distinctions implied by the imprints were subtle but important . Books that London issued on commission ( paid for by their authors or by some learned body ) were styled ' Henry Frowde ' , or ' Humphrey Milford ' with no mention of OUP , as if the Publisher were issuing them himself , while books that the Publisher issued under the rubric of the University bore the imprint ' Oxford University Press ' . Both these categories were mostly handled by London , while Oxford ( in practice the Secretary ) looked after the Clarendon Press books . Commission books were intended as cash cows to fund the London Business ' s overheads , since the Press did not lay aside any resources for this purpose . Nevertheless Frowde was especially careful to see that all commission books he published met with the Delegates ' approval . This was not an uncommon arrangement for scholarly or antiquarian presses . Price quickly primed Frowde for the imminent publication jointly with Cambridge University Press of the Revised Version of the Bible , which promised to be a ' bestseller ' on a scale that would require the employment of all the Press ' s resources to keep up with the demand . This was to be a complete retranslation of the text of the Bible from the oldest original Greek and Hebrew versions , superseding the Authorized Version of 1611 . Frowde ' s agency was set up just in time , for the Revised Version , published on 17 May 1881 , sold a million copies before publication and at a breakneck rate thenceforth , though overproduction ultimately made a dent in the profits . Though Frowde was by no means an Oxford man and had no social pretensions of being one , he was a sound businessman who was able to strike the magic balance between caution and enterprise . From quite early on he had ideas of advancing the Press ' s overseas trade , at first in Europe and increasingly in America , Canada , India and Africa . He was more or less singlehandedly responsible for setting up the American Branch as well as depots in Edinburgh , Toronto and Melbourne . Frowde dealt with most of the logistics for books carrying the OUP imprint , including handling authors , binding , dispatching , and advertising , and only editorial work and the printing itself were carried out at or supervised from Oxford . Frowde regularly remitted money back to Oxford , but he privately felt that the business was undercapitalized and would pretty soon become a serious drain on the university ' s resources unless put on a sound commercial footing . He himself was authorized to invest money up to a limit in the business but was prevented from doing so by family troubles . Hence his interest in overseas sales , for by the 1880s and 1890s there was money to be made in India , while the European book market was in the doldrums . But Frowde ' s distance from the Press ' s decision - making meant he was incapable of influencing policy unless a Delegate spoke for him . Most of the time Frowde did whatever he could within the mandate given him by the Delegates . In 1905 when applying for a pension he wrote to J . R . Magrath , the then Vice Chancellor , that during the seven years when he had served as manager of the Bible Warehouse the sales of the London Business had averaged about £20 , 000 and the profits £1 , 887 per year . By 1905 , under his management as Publisher , the sales had risen to upwards of £200 , 000 per year and the profits in that 29 years of service averaged £8 , 242 per year . Conflict over the Secretaryship . Price , trying in his own way to modernize the Press against the resistance of its own historical inertia , had become overworked and by 1883 was so exhausted as to want to retire . Benjamin Jowett had become Vice Chancellor of the University in 1882 . Impatient of the endless committees that would no doubt attend the appointment of a successor to Price , Jowett extracted what could be interpreted as permission from the Delegates and headhunted Philip Lyttelton Gell , a former student acolyte of his , to be the next Secretary to the Delegates . Gell was making a name for himself at the publishing firm of Cassell , Petter and Galpin , a firm regarded as scandalously commercial by the Delegates . Gell himself was a patrician who was unhappy with his work , where he saw himself as catering to the taste of ' one class : the lower middle ' , and he grasped at the chance of working with the kind of texts and readerships OUP attracted . Jowett promised Gell golden opportunities , little of which he actually had the authority to deliver . He timed Gell ' s appointment to coincide with both the Long Vacation ( from June to September ) and the death of Mark Pattison , so potential opposition was prevented from attending the crucial meetings . Jowett knew the primary reason why Gell would attract hostility was that he had never worked for the Press nor been a Delegate , and he had sullied himself in the City with raw commerce . His fears were borne out . Gell immediately proposed a thorough modernising of the Press with a marked lack of tact , and earned himself enduring enemies . Nevertheless he was able to do a lot in tandem with Frowde , and expanded the publishing programmes and the reach of OUP until about 1898 . Then his health broke down under the impossible work conditions he was being forced to endure by the Delegates ' non - cooperation . The Delegates then served him with a notice of termination of service that violated his contract . However , he was persuaded not to file suit and to go quietly . The Delegates were not opposed primarily to his initiatives , but to his manner of executing them and his lack of sympathy with the academic way of life . In their view the Press was , and always would be , an association of scholars . Gell ' s idea of ' efficiency ' appeared to violate that culture , although subsequently a very similar programme of reform was put into practice from the inside . The 20th century . Charles Cannan , who had been instrumental in Gell ' s removal , succeeded Gell in 1898 , and Humphrey S . Milford , his younger colleague , effectively succeeded Frowde in 1907 . Both were Oxford men who knew the system inside out , and the close collaboration with which they worked was a function of their shared background and worldview . Cannan was known for terrifying silences , and Milford had an uncanny ability , testified to by Amen House employees , to ‘ disappear ’ in a room rather like a Cheshire cat , from which obscurity he would suddenly address his subordinates and make them jump . Whatever their reasons for their style of working , both Cannan and Milford had a very hardnosed view of what needed to be done , and they proceeded to do it . Indeed Frowde knew within a few weeks of Milford ’ s entering the London office in [ 1904 ] that he would be replaced . Milford , however , always treated Frowde with courtesy , and Frowde remained in an advisory capacity till 1913 . Milford rapidly teamed up with J . E . Hodder Williams of Hodder and Stoughton , setting up what was known as the Joint Account for the issue of a wide range of books in education , science , medicine and also fiction . Milford began putting in practice a number of initiatives , including the foundations of most of the Press ’ s global branches . Development of overseas trade . Milford took responsibility for overseas trade almost at once , and by 1906 he was making plans to send a traveller to India and the Far East jointly with Hodder and Stoughton . N . Graydon ( first name unknown ) was the first such traveller in 1907 , and again in 1908 when he represented OUP exclusively in India , the Straits and the Far East . A . H . Cobb replaced him in 1909 , and in 1910 Cobb functioned as a travelling manager semi - permanently stationed in India . In 1911 E . V . Rieu went out to East Asia via the Trans - Siberian Railway , had several adventures in China and Russia , then came south to India and spent most of the year meeting educationists and officials all over India . In 1912 , he arrived again in Bombay , now known as Mumbai . There he rented an office in the dockside area and set up the first overseas Branch . In 1914 Europe was plunged into turmoil . The first effects of the war were paper shortages and losses and disturbances in shipping , then quickly a dire lack of hands as the staff were called up and went to serve on the field . Many of the staff including two of the pioneers of the Indian branch were killed in action . Curiously , sales through the years 1914 to 1917 were good and it was only towards the end of the war that conditions really began pinching . Rather than bringing relief from shortages , the 1920s saw skyrocketing prices of both materials and labour . Paper especially was hard to come by , and had to be imported from South America through trading companies . Economies and markets slowly recovered as the 1920s progressed . In 1928 the Press ’ s imprint read ‘ London , Edinburgh , Glasgow , Leipzig , Toronto , Melbourne , Cape Town , Bombay , Calcutta , Madras and Shanghai ’ . Not all of these were full - fledged branches : in Leipzig there was a depot run by H . Bohun Beet , and In Canada and Australia there were small , functional depots in the cities and an army of educational representatives penetrating the rural fastnesses to sell the Press ’ s stock as well as books published by firms whose agencies were held by the Press , very often including fiction and light reading . In India , the Branch depots in Bombay , Madras , and Calcutta were imposing establishments with sizable stock inventories , for the Presidencies themselves were large markets , and the educational representatives there dealt mostly with upcountry trade . The Depression of 1929 dried profits from the Americas to a trickle , and India became ' the one bright spot ' in an otherwise dismal picture . Bombay was the nodal point for distribution to the Africas and onward sale to Australasia , and people who trained at the three major depots moved later on to pioneer branches in Africa and South East Asia . The Press ’ s experience of World War II was similar to World War I except that Milford was now close to retirement and ‘ hated to see the young men go ’ . The London blitz this time was much more intense and the London Business was shifted temporarily to Oxford . Milford , now extremely unwell and reeling under a series of personal bereavements , was prevailed upon to stay till the end of the war and keep the business going . As before , everything was in short supply , but the U - boat threat made shipping doubly uncertain , and the letterbooks are full of doleful records of consignments lost at sea . Occasionally an author , too , would be reported missing or dead , as well as staff who were now scattered over the battlefields of the globe . DORA , the Defence of the Realm Act , required the surrender of all nonessential metal for the manufacture of armaments , and many valuable electrotype plates were melted down by government order . With the end of the war Milford ' s place was taken by Geoffrey Cumberlege . This period saw consolidation in the face of the breakup of the Empire and the post - war reorganization of the Commonwealth . In tandem with institutions like the British Council , OUP began to reposition itself in the education market . Ngũgĩ wa Thiong ' o in his book " Moving the Centre : The Struggle for Cultural Freedom " records how the Oxford Readers for Africa with their heavily Anglo - centric worldview struck him as a child in Kenya . The Press has evolved since then to be one of the largest players in a globally expanding scholarly and reference book market . The Indian branch . When OUP arrived on Indian shores , it was preceded by the immense prestige of the " Sacred Books of the East " , edited by Friedrich Max Müller , which had at last reached completion in 50 ponderous volumes . While actual purchase of this series was beyond the means of most Indians , libraries usually had a set , generously provided by the government of India , available on open reference shelves , and the books had been widely discussed in the Indian press . Although there had been plenty of criticism of them , the general feeling was that Max Müller had done India a favour by popularising ancient Asian ( Persia n , Arabic , India n and Sinic ) philosophy in the West . This prior reputation was useful , but the Indian Branch was not primarily in Bombay to sell Indological books , which OUP knew already sold well only in America . It was there to serve the vast educational market created by the rapidly expanding school and college network in British India . In spite of disruptions caused by war , it won a crucial contract to print textbooks for the Central Provinces in 1915 and this helped to stabilize its fortunes in this difficult phase . E . V . Rieu could not longer delay his callup and was drafted in 1917 , the management then being under his wife Nellie Rieu , a former editor for the " Athenaeum " ‘ with the assistance of her two British babies . ’ It was too late to have important electrotype and stereotype plates shipped to India from Oxford , and the Oxford printing house itself was overburdened with government printing orders as the empire ’ s propaganda machine got to work . At one point non - governmental composition at Oxford was reduced to 32 pages a week . By 1919 Rieu was very ill and had to be brought home . He was replaced by Geoffrey Cumberlege and Noel Carrington . Noel was the brother of Dora Carrington , the artist , and even got her to illustrate his " Stories Retold " edition of " Don Quixote " for the Indian market . Their father Charles Carrington had been a railway engineer in India in the nineteenth century . Noel Carrington ' s unpublished memoir of his six years in India is in the Oriental and India Office Collections of the British Library . By 1915 there were makeshift depots at Madras and Calcutta . In 1920 Noel Carrington went to Calcutta to set up a proper branch . There he became friendly with Edward Thompson who involved him in the abortive scheme to produce the ' Oxford Book of Bengali Verse ' . In Madras , there was never a formal branch in the same sense as Bombay and Calcutta , as the management of the depot there seems to have rested in the hands of two local academics . East and South East Asia . OUP ' s interaction with this area was part of their mission to India , since many of their travellers took in East and South East Asia on their way out to or back from India . Graydon on his first trip in 1907 had travelled the ' Straits Settlements ' ( largely the Federated Malay States and Singapore ) , China , and Japan , but was not able to do much . In 1909 A . H . Cobb visited teachers and booksellers in Shanghai , and found that the main competition there was cheap books from America , often straight reprints of British books . The copyright situation at the time , subsequent to the Chace Act of 1891 , was such that American publishers could publish such books with impunity although they were considered contraband in all British territories . To secure copyright in both territories publishers had to arrange for simultaneous publication , an endless logistical headache in this age of steamships . Prior publication in any one territory forfeited copyright protection in the other . Cobb mandated Henzell & Co . of Shanghai ( which seems to have been run by a professor ) to represent OUP in that city . The Press had problems with Henzell , who were irregular with correspondence . They also traded with Edward Evans , another Shanghai bookseller . Milford observed , ‘ we ought to do much more in China than we are doing ’ and authorized Cobb in 1910 to find a replacement for Henzell as their representative to the educational authorities . That replacement was to be Miss M . Verne McNeely , a redoubtable lady who was a member of the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge , and also ran a bookshop . She looked after the affairs of the Press very capably and occasionally sent Milford boxes of complimentary cigars . Her association with OUP seems to date from 1910 , although she did not have exclusive agency for OUP ' s books . Bibles were the major item of trade in China , unlike India where educational books topped the lists , even if Oxford ' s lavishly produced and expensive Bible editions were not very competitive beside cheap American ones . In the 1920s , once the Indian Branch was up and running , it became the custom for staff members going out or returning to take a tour of East and South East Asia . Milford ' s nephew R . Christopher Bradby went out in 1928 . He returned to Britain just in time , for on 18 October 1931 , the Japanese invaded Manchuria . Miss M . Verne McNeely wrote a letter of protest to the League of Nations and one of despair to Milford , who tried to comfort her . Japan was a much less well - known market to OUP , and a small volume of trade was carried out largely through intermediaries . The Maruzen company was by far the largest customer , and had a special arrangement regarding terms . Other business was routed through H . L . Griffiths , a professional publishers ’ representative based in Sannomiya , Kobe . Griffiths travelled for the Press to major Japanese schools and bookshops and took a 10 percent commission . Edmund Blunden had been briefly at the University of Tokyo and put the Press in touch with the University booksellers , Fukumoto Stroin . One important acquisition did come from Japan , however : A . S . Hornby ' s Advanced Learner ' s Dictionary . It also publishes textbooks for the primary and secondary education curriculum in Hong Kong . The Chinese - language teaching titles are published with the brand Keys Press ( 啟思出版社 ) . North America . The North American branch was established in 1896 at 91 Fifth Avenue in New York City to facilitate the sale of Oxford Bibles in the United States . Subsequently , it took over marketing of all books of its parent from Macmillan . This office grew in sales between 1928 and 1936 , eventually becoming one of the leading University Presses in the United States . It is focused on scholarly and reference books , Bibles , and college and medical textbooks . In the 1990s , this office moved from 200 Madison Avenue ( a building it shared with Putnam Publishing ) to 198 Madison Avenue , which was the former B . Altman Company headquarters . South America . In December 1909 Cobb returned and rendered his accounts for his Asia trip that year . Cobb then proposed to Milford that the Press join a combination of firms to send commercial travellers around South America , to which Milford in principle agreed . Cobb obtained the services of a man called Steer ( first name unknown ) to travel through Argentina , Brazil , Uruguay , Chile and possibly other countries as well , with Cobb to be responsible for Steer . Hodder & Stoughton opted out of this venture , but OUP went ahead and contributed to it . Steer ’ s trip was a disaster , and Milford remarked gloomily that it ‘ bid fair to be the most costly and least productive on record ’ of all traveller ’ s trips . Steer returned before he had covered more than half of his itinerary , and on returning failed to have his customs payments refunded , with the result that a hefty sum of £210 was lost to the Press . The Press was obliged to disburse 80 percent of the value of the books he had carried as ‘ incidental expenses ’ , so even if they had got substantial orders they would still have made a loss . Few orders did in fact come out of the trip , and when Steer ' s box of samples returned , the London office found that they had not been opened further down than the second layer . Africa . Some trade with East Africa passed through Bombay . Southern Africa . Following a period of acting mostly as a distribution agent for OUP titles published in the UK , in the 1960s OUP Southern Africa started publishing local authors , for the general reader , but also for schools and universities . Its territory includes Botswana , Lesotho , Swaziland and Namibia , as well as South Africa , the biggest market of the five . OUP Southern Africa is now one of the three biggest educational publishers in South Africa , and focuses its attention on publishing textbooks , dictionaries , atlases and supplementary material for schools , and textbooks for universities . Its author base is overwhelmingly local , and in 2008 it entered into a partnership with the Mandela Rhodes Foundation to support scholarships for South Africans studying postgraduate degrees . Establishment of the Music Department . Prior to the twentieth century , the Press at Oxford had occasionally printed a piece of music or a book relating to musicology . It had also published " The Yattendon Hymnal " in 1899 and , more significantly , the first edition of " The English Hymnal " in 1906 , under the editorship of Percy Dearmer and the then largely unknown Ralph Vaughan Williams . Sir William Henry Hadow ' s multi - volume " Oxford History of Music " had appeared between 1901 and 1905 . Such musical publishing enterprises , however , were rare : " In nineteenth - century Oxford the idea that music might in any sense be educational would not have been entertained " , and few of the Delegates or former Publishers were themselves musical or had extensive music backgrounds . In the London office , however , Milford had musical taste , and had connections particularly with the world of church and cathedral musicians . In 1921 , Milford hired Hubert J . Foss , originally as an assistant to Educational Manger V . H . Collins . In that work , Foss showed energy and imagination . However , as Sutcliffe says , Foss , a modest composer and gifted pianist , " was not particularly interested in education ; he was passionately interested in music . " When shortly thereafter Foss brought to Milford a scheme for publishing a group of essays by well - known musicians on composers whose works were frequently played on the radio , Milford may have thought of it as less music - related than education - related . There is no clear record of the thought process whereby the Press would enter into the publishing of music for performance . Foss ' s presence , and his knowledge , ability , enthusiasm , and imagination may well have been the catalyst bringing hitherto unconnected activities together in Milford ' s mind , as another new venture similar to the establishment of the overseas branches . Milford may not have fully understood what he was undertaking . A fiftieth anniversary pamphlet published by the Music Department in 1973 says that OUP had " no knowledge of the music trade , no representative to sell to music shops , and−−it seems−−no awareness that sheet music was in any way a different commodity from books . " However intentionally or intuitively , Milford took three steps that launched OUP on a major operation . He bought the Anglo - French Music Company and all its facilities , connections , and resources . He hired Norman Peterkin , a moderately well - known musician , as full - time sales manager for music . And in 1923 he established as a separate division the Music Department , with its own offices in Amen House and with Foss as first Musical Editor . Then , other than general support , Milford left Foss largely to his own devices . Foss responded with incredible energy . He worked to establish " the largest possible list in the shortest possible time , " , adding titles at the rate of over 200 a year ; eight years later there were 1750 titles in the catalogue . In the year of the department ' s establishment , Foss began a series of inexpensive but well edited and printed choral pieces under the series title " Oxford Choral Songs " . This series , under the general editorship of W . G . Whittaker , was OUP ' s first commitment to the publishing of music for performance , rather than in book form or for study . The series plan was expanded by adding the similarly inexpensive but high - quality " Oxford Church Music " and " Tudor Church Music " ( taken over from the Carnagie UK Trust ) ; all these series continue today . The scheme of contributed essays Foss had originally brought to Milford appeared in 1927 as the " Heritage of Music " ( two more volumes would appear over the next thirty years ) . Percy Scholes ' s " Listener ' s Guide to Music " ( originally published in 1919 ) was similarly brought into the new department as the first of a series of books on music appreciation for the listening public . Scholes ' s continuing work for OUP , designed to match the growth of broadcast and recorded music , plus his other work in journalistic music criticism , would be later comprehensively organized and summarized in the " Oxford Companion to Music " . Perhaps most importantly , Foss seemed to have a knack for finding new composers of what he regarded as distinctively English music , which had broad appeal to the public . This concentration provided OUP two mutually reinforcing benefits : a niche in music publishing unoccupied by potential competitors , and a branch of music performance and composition that the English themselves had largely neglected . Hinnells proposes that the early Music Department ' s " mixture of scholarship and cultural nationalism " in an area of music with largely unknown commercial prospects was driven by its sense of cultural philanthropy ( given the Press ' s academic background ) and a desire to promote " national music outside the German mainstream . " In consequence , Foss actively promoted the performance and sought publication of music by Ralph Vaughan Williams , William Walton , Constant Lambert , Alan Rawsthorne , Peter Warlock ( Philip Heseltine ) , Edmund Rubbra and other English composers . In what the Press called " the most durable gentleman ' s agreement in the history of modern music , " Foss guaranteed the publication of any music that Vaughan Williams would care to offer them . In addition , Foss worked to secure OUP ' s rights not only to music publication and live performance , but the " mechanical " rights to recording and broadcast . It was not at all clear at the time how significant these would become . Indeed , Foss , OUP , and a number of composers at first declined to join or support the Performing Right Society , fearing that its fees would discourage performance in the new media . Later years would show that , to the contrary , these forms of music would prove more lucrative than the traditional venues of music publishing . Whatever the Music Department ' s growth in quantity , breadth of musical offering , and reputation amongst both musicians and the general public , the whole question of financial return came to a head in the 1930s . Milford as London publisher had fully supported the Music Department during its years of formation and growth . However , he came under increasing pressure from the Delegates in Oxford concerning the continued flow of expenditures from what seemed to them an unprofitable venture . In their mind , the operations at Amen House were supposed to be both academically respectable and financially remunerative . The London office " existed to make money for the Clarendon Press to spend on the promotion of learning . " Further , OUP treated its book publications as short - term projects : any books that did not sell within a few years of publication were written off ( to show as unplanned or hidden income if in fact they sold thereafter ) . In contrast , the Music Department ' s emphasis on music for performance was comparatively long - term and continuing , particularly as income from recurring broadcasts or recordings came in , and as it continued to build its relationships with new and upcoming musicians . The Delegates were not comfortable with Foss ' s viewpoint : " I still think this word ' loss ' is a misnomer : is it not really capital invested ? " wrote Foss to Milford in 1934 . Thus it was not until 1939 that the Music Department showed its first profitable year . By then , the economic pressures of the Depression as well as the in - house pressure to reduce expenditures , and possibly the academic background of the parent body in Oxford , combined to make OUP ' s primary musical business that of publishing works intended for formal musical education and for music appreciation−−again the influence of broadcast and recording . This matched well with an increased demand for materials to support music education in British schools , a result of governmental reforms of education during the 1930s . The Press did not cease to search out and publish new musicians and their music , but the tenor of the business had changed . Foss , suffering personal health problems , chafing under economic constraints plus ( as the war years drew on ) shortages in paper , and disliking intensely the move of all the London operations to Oxford to avoid The Blitz , resigned his position in 1941 , to be succeeded by Peterkin . Scholarly journals . OUP has also been a major publisher of academic journals , both in the sciences and the humanities . It has been noted as one of the first university presses to publish an open access journal ( " Nucleic Acids Research " ) , and probably the first to introduce Hybrid open access journal s . OUP ' s contribution to typography and presswork . Printer to the University Horace Hart . It has lent its name to the Oxford comma . Clarendon Scholarships . Since 2001 , Oxford University Press has financially supported the Clarendon bursary , a University of Oxford graduate scholarship scheme .