ABSTRACT
Printing was not brought into a society without books or a book trade. There was a well-established trade in books in London and the larger provincial centres. The production, distribution and sale of these books created a good deal of employment. There were scribes and scriveners who wrote them, limners and illuminators who illustrated and rubricated them, binders who bound them and retailers who sold them. There were also merchants who supplied the raw materials: paper and parchment for writing on, ink and pens for writing with, and skins for bindings. Since the early fifteenth century, the majority of those engaged in these trades in London had belonged to a trade guild which came to be called the Company of Stationers. To be a member of the Company gave a man both privileges and obligations; above all, he had the right to trade in the City of London of which he was a citizen by virtue of being a liveryman of the Company. This gave the City authorities jurisdiction over him in many respects, including the right to regulate the prices of his goods and his places of trade, but on balance there were far more benefits than disadvantages.
