Cathedral Libraries Catalogue

INTRODUCTION

Statistics

For those who like such things, we are able to offer some statistics on the survival of the STC and Wing material in the cathedral libraries. These figures have been produced automatically by the computer from the database for the material in the main STC and Wing sections. The other sections (Periodicals and Statutes) were not stored in the same way and so are not included in the counts.

Globally, there are 8,017 entries for STC and 17,837 for Wing, a total of 25,854 entries, representing (more or less) the number of editions in the catalogue. Of these entries, 1,637 are new ones (whose numbers have a + or --), there being 38 for STC and 1,599 for Wing. The number of separate copies recorded is 15,260 for STC (an average of 1.9 per edition) and 37,645 for Wing (an average of 2.1). The total number of copies in this volume of the catalogue is 52,905.

As the statistics of survival for early printed books are of some interest to historians of printing and to social historians, we provide a fuller analysis of the two sets of data, showing the number of editions surviving in 1, 2, 3, ... copies, followed by an analysis of the most popular items for STC and Wing.

copies  STC    Wing 


  1   4,836  10,059
  2   1,636   3,566
  3     684   1,671
  4     328     955
  5     188     554
  6     121     357
  7      64     178
  8      41     133
  9      35      94
 10      32      73
 11      16      44
 12      10      42
 13       4      32
 14       6      19
 15       5      10
 16       2      13
 17       1       5
 18       2       4
 19       3      11
 20       1       4
 21       2       2
 22       0       1
 23       0       1
 24       0       0
 25       0       1
 26       0       3
 27       0       1
 28       0       0
 29       0       0
 30       0       0
 31       0       0
 32       0       2
 33       0       1
 34       0       0
 35       0       1
Not surprisingly, by far the largest single group is the group of editions surviving (in this catalogue) in only one copy: 60 per cent of the STC items, and 56 per cent of the Wing items. The missing category in these data is for editions surviving in no copies. We invite statisticians to investigate the distributions shown in the table and to try to estimate the size of this zero category. (Would this figure, added to the figure for the total cathedral holdings, represent an estimate of the output of the English booktrade to 1700?)

A further satisfaction for the curious is provided by asking the computer to identify the most popular books in the catalogue. The survival figures given (as in the table above) do not always indicate the number of cathedrals owning the book, as there are many examples of multiple copies (in some cases as many as five or more copies in one cathedral).

For STC, the list of best-sellers is: [ Wing ] [ Survival ] [ Intro ]

1. (21 copies).
STC 14629a
John, Chrysostom, Saint, Ta euriskomena, 1613.

STC 15298
William Laud, A relation of the conference betweene William Lawd, and Mr Fisher the Jesuite, 1639.

3. (20 copies).
STC 25382
Francis White, A replie to jesuit Fishers answere, 1624.

4. (19 copies).
STC 602
Lancelot Andrewes, Opuscula quædam posthuma, 1629.

STC 18033
Richard Montague, Apparatus ad origines ecclesiasticas, 1635.

STC 23066
Sir Henry Spelman, Concilia, decreta, leges, constitutiones, in re ecclesiarum orbis Britannici, 1639.

7. (18 copies).
STC 17598
Francis Mason, Vindici æ ecclesi æ Anglicanæ, 1625.

STC 25223 : John Weever, Ancient funerall monuments, 1631.

9. (17 copies).
STC 18037
Richard Montagu, Diatrib æ upon the first part of of the late history of tithes, 1621.

10. (16 copies).
STC 3534
Thomas Bradwardine, De causa Dei, contra Pelagium, et de virtute causarum, libri tres, 1618.

STC 5821
Richard Cosin, An apologie for sundrie proceedings, 1593.

For Wing, the corresponding figures are: [ STC ] [ Survival ] [ Intro ]

1. (35 copies).
Wing B2797
Bible, Biblia sacra polyglotta, 1657.

2. (33 copies).
Wing B3622
Book of Common Prayer, By His Ma:ties printers, 1662.

3. (32 copies).
Wing C1224 +
Edmund Castell, Lexicon heptaglotton, 1669.

Wing P2853 +
Matthew Poole, Synopsis criticorum, 5 vols, fol., 1669--76.

5. (27 copies).
Wing F2416
Thomas Fuller, The church-history of Britain, 1655.

6. (26 copies).
Wing B2115
William Beveridge, Synodikon sive pandectae, 1672.

Wing L3565
William Lyndwood, Provinciale, 1679, fol.

Wing O607
John Overall, Bishop Overall's convocation-book, 1690.

9. (25 copies).
Wing W1560
Henry Wharton, Anglia sacra, 1691.

10. (23 copies).
Wing C7711
St Cyprian, Opera, 1682.