Sales and Distribution
Daniel Press books were made for limited distribution among a small circle of literary friends or for sale to benefit charity. Even after the Press began selling its works through distributors, the prices remained modest. The Daniels worked initially with two Oxford booksellers, W.H. Gee and Blackwell’s, and later distributed their books through Elkin Mathews and John Lane of the Bodley Head in London. Upon Daniel’s death, Oxford bookseller Leslie Chaundy purchased and sold many remainders.
Robert Bridges (1844-1930). The Feast of Bacchus. Oxford: Privately Printed by H. Daniel, 1889. Edition of 105.
Although the Daniels began distributing their books through commercial booksellers in the 1880s, they continued to sell copies directly to customers as well. This copy of Robert Bridges’s play, The Feast of Bacchus (1889), is accompanied by a receipt dated May 30, 1890, from Daniel to the buyer, Frederic Parker Morrell, for 10 shillings. Two months later, the edition was completely sold out.
Purchased 2019
Letter from C.H.O. Daniel to C. Elkin Mathews, Sept. 21, 1907.
In 1889, Daniel began selling remainders through the Bodley Head, the joint London publishing firm of Elkin Mathews and John Lane. When the firm’s partnership dissolved in October 1894, Daniel continued to work with Mathews alone.
Daniel reluctantly agrees in this letter to sell a copy of the final work issued by the press, Preces vespertinae (1906), to a customer via Mathews for 10 shillings. The book was produced after a hiatus of four years for the private use of Worcester College chapel, and, as Daniel states, “will hardly have a successor.”
Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, University of Delaware Library, Museums and Press
Sir Nicholas Bacon (1509-1579). The Recreations of His Age. Oxford: Daniel, 1903 (Issued 1919). Edition of 130.
Daniel printed the whole text of this work in 1903 but never brought the publication to completion. When it was found posthumously in sheets amongst his papers, Frederic Madan added a title page and preface, and the family sold the edition though the Oxford bookseller, Leslie Chaundy. The text is a group of 36 previously unpublished poems written by Sir Nicholas Bacon, father of the great philosopher.
Gift of Frederick Coykendall, 1939