Another 1642 stop-press news item

In an earlier post this year I recorded a variant issue of an English Civil War news pamphlet which had been updated as it went through the press to include a newly received piece of news, filling an empty space on the final page (see A stop-press news item in 1642). A similar example has come to light in one of the collections of Civil War pamphlets at Canterbury Cathedral Library.

Stop-press additions of this sort give us a brief glimpse into the work of printer-publishers during the early years of the conflict between king and parliament shortly before the outbreak of actual fighting. We see members of the book-trade realising that there existed a ready market for the very latest news of the developments  in the controversy.

My new example of stop-press addition is an eight-page pamphlet printed in London recording the King’s appeal for supporters in Yorkshire to meet him on Heworth Moor following his decision to leave London. The Canterbury Cathedral title page lacks the words ‘With a Catalogue of the names’ beneath line 10 of the title. Other copies which have this additional line have a list of the noblemen who attended the Heworth Moor meeting on the final page of the pamphlet, which is blank in the Canterbury copy.

The original edition of this pamphlet was printed by the King’s Printer to summon people to the meeting in Yorkshire. The present edition is a reprint issued a day or two later after the meeting had taken place.  The list of attendees must have reached London as printing was in progress. Work stopped at  the press; a line was inserted into the title page and the list of names was added on the final blank page. Printing then resumed. A modern publisher would have pulped the original issues and printed extra copies with the updated text. Typical seventeenth-century practice was more economically minded: both issues were put on sale, with and without the list of names.

Close examination of copies in Civil War collections is very likely to turn up further examples of stop-press additions, which give us small insights into the production practices of contemporary printers and their awareness of the urgent need to be kept up-to-date on the part of the purchasing public.

The two issues are recorded on the English Short-Title Catalogue (ESTC) :
First issue, without the list of names: R511856 (three copies recorded)
Second issue, with the list of names: R35844 (twelve copies recorded, not all verified)

New discoveries can be contributed to ESTC at https://www.cerl.org/resources/estc/contributing