The present volume is an attempt to present in a succinct form the history of an University which, however uncertain its origin, is among the oldest institutions in Europe. The result of such a task must needs fall very far short of perfection, and it is probably a just appreciation of its difficulties which has deterred abler historians from undertaking it.

A generation or so ago, the Inklings - C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and Charles Williams - met regularly in an Oxford pub to encourage one another in the writing of fictions set in fantasy worlds... Philip Pullman's Gyptians live on an Oxford canal and it is from Oxford that his characters gain entry to another world... It is true that Oxford is a world to itself, a village where everyone stops in the Broad or the High to exchange local gossip... The visitor walking among the golden colleges may still see students setting off for examinations dressed in black and white... But encounters in the street are as likely to grapplings with politics (local, national and international) as exchanges about a point of scholarly detail... The 'reality' of Oxford is that it is not at all a land of faery.'

The history of Oxford University Press spans five centuries of printing and publishing. This third volume begins with the establishment of the New York office in 1896. It traces the expansion of OUP in America, Australia, Asia, and Africa, and far-reaching changes in the business and technology of publishing up to 1970.