Are there too many Books? Available to Purchase

Shortly after you so kindly in‐vited me to speak to you I noticed on my bookshelves a scarce book published by the Oxford University Press in 1903 entitled A Chart of Oxford Printing, ‘1468’‐1900. In this book Falconer Madan exhibited the fluctuations in the output of the Printing press at Oxford from its beginnings down to the time when popular education was just making its effect felt in a considerably increased demand for its books. In the chart which Madan prepared we see graphically the varying, but gradually increasing, number of books printed or published by Oxford alone over the centuries, from ones and twos annually in the 1480s to the rising volume of 40 or so in the 17th century (over 100 exceptionally in 1643) on to the two hundreds of Victorian times. Today, i.e., in 1952, we have the Oxford University Press publishing, or becoming agents for, 767 new books or reprints.