Early Printing History

Printing came to Scotland in 1507. James IV is widely acknowledged as being responsible for introducing printing in Scotland in 1507 after the Bishop of Aberdeen, wanting a breviary published, persuaded  him to grant a charter allowing the establishment of a printing press in Scotland. The first printers in Scotland were Chepman and Myllar, who in 1507 began printing from the South Gait (now the Cowgate) in Edinburgh. The first book issued from their presses was the Bible in 1507/08. Printing slowly spread from Edinburgh to other centres in Scotland: first in St Andrews in 1522, then Stirling in 1571, Aberdeen in 1622, Glasgow in 1638 and Leith in 1651.

For further information about early Scottish publishing, consult the following online web-resource:

David Finkelstein, History of Scottish Publishing.

It contains short histories of the following nineteenth-century Scottish print and publishing pioneers:

• Archibald Constable
• William Blackwood,
• Oliver & Boyd,
• William and Robert Chambers,
• William Green,
• William Collins,
• Bartholomew and Sons,
• D.C.Thomson,
• Aberdeen University Press.

For another online source on the history of William Chambers, consult Alistair McCleery, Defining Characters

For information on Gaelic Publishing history, see

Hugh Cheape, The Gaelic Book: The Printed Book in Scottish Gaelic, Edinburgh: International League of Antiquarian Booksellers

and

David Finkelstein, The Gaelic Community.

For an online commentary on producing national histories of the book in the twenty-first century, visit here.

Other Scottish printing and publishing houses of note:

Blacks

Adam Black was a graduate of Edinburgh University who began publishing in Edinburgh in 1807 with his nephew Charles. Blacks bought the Encyclopaedia Britannica from Constable’s in 1826. However, the main boost to their firm was when they bought the copyright and stocks of all Scott’s work in 1851. In 1890 A and C Black relocated from Edinburgh to London.

R & R Clark

R & R Clark was founded in 1846 and went on to play an important role in Edinburgh's printing history. The firm enjoyed close relationships with the authors Rudyard Kipling, Robert Louis Stevenson and George Bernard Shaw.

Foulis

The bookbinding firm Hunter and Foulis was founded by William Hunter at Strichen's Close, off the the High Street, Edinburgh in 1857 as William Hunter & Company. The firm was taken over in 1925 by Douglas A Foulis and it became Hunter & Foulis Ltd in 1946. In 1968 the company was taken over by Henderson and Bisset in 1968. However, Hunter and Foulis continue as a family business and remain one of the largest publishers' bookbinders in the UK. The firm has recently moved premises from this site in the Bridgeside Works.