History of Oxford University Timeline

Oxford University Press has had a similar governance structure since the 17th century, with oversight by Delegates of the Press appointed from among the university's academics.

By 1760, the university moved to adopt all of Blackstone's reforms, which helped modernize the administration of the university and its press.

It took the 1850 Royal Commission on the workings of the university and a new Secretary, Bartholomew Price, to shake up the press and modernize its operations.

The next Secretary, Philip Lyttelton Gell, was appointed by Vice-Chancellor Benjamin Jowett in 1884 but struggled in the role and was finally dismissed in 1897.

Image source: Philip Lyttelton Gell

The first application for tax exemption, by Cambridge University Press in 1940, was rejected on the ground that the Press's trade went beyond the purpose and objects of the University. Similar applications by OUP in 1944 and 1950 were also rejected by the Inland Revenue.

In November 1975, CUP's chief executive Geoffrey Cass again applied to the Inland Revenue, and a year later CUP's tax exemption was quietly conceded. OUP's Chief Executive George Richardson followed suit in 1977, and OUP's tax exemption was granted in 1978.

In March 2001, after a 28-year battle with the Indian tax authorities, OUP lost its tax exemption in India.

In 2003, Joel Rickett of The Bookseller wrote in The Guardian describing commercial rivals' resentment at OUP's tax exemption, predicting funds would be used to buy up other publishers. Between 1989 and 2018, OUP bought out over 70 rival book and journal publishers.

In 2007, with the new 'public benefit' requirement of the revised Charities Act, the issue of the university presses' privileges was re-examined with particular reference to OUP. In 2008, CUP's and OUP's privilege was attacked by rival publishers, and in 2009 The Guardian invited Andrew Malcolm to write an article on the subject.

Image source: Charities Act 2006

In 1825, the Delegates bought land on Walton Street in Oxford, acquiring the site where the press's new headquarters would be built.

Buildings were constructed from plans drawn up by Daniel Robertson and Edward Blore, and the press moved into them in 1830. At this time it was still a joint-stock printing business offering learned works to a small readership of scholars and clerics.

Thomas Combe joined the press in 1830 and became the university's Printer until his death in 1872, overseeing a significant period of the press's operations.

Image source: Thomas Combe

Alexander Macmillan became the publisher for Oxford's printing in 1863, helping Price create the Clarendon Press series of cheap, elementary school books – perhaps the first time Oxford used the Clarendon imprint. The press had also ended its relationship with Parker's in 1863. Macmillan's contract ended in 1880 and was not renewed.

The best-known text associated with Thomas Combe's print shop was the flawed first edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, printed by Oxford at the expense of its author Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) in 1865.

Image source: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Appointed in 1868, Bartholomew Price had already recommended that the press needed an efficient executive officer to exercise 'vigilant superintendence' of the business. He retired as Secretary in 1884, the year the Delegates bought back the last shares in the business.

Image source: Bartholomew Price

In 1870, OUP bought a small London bindery for some Bible work, expanding its London operations after ending its relationship with Parker's in 1863.

OUP's output increased to include school books and modern scholarly texts such as James Clerk Maxwell's A Treatise on Electricity & Magnetism (1873), which proved fundamental to Einstein's thought.

Image source: A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism

In 1875, the Delegates approved the series Sacred Books of the East under the editorship of Friedrich Max Müller, bringing a vast range of religious thought to a wider readership.

Image source: Sacred Books of the East

In 1879, the press took on the massive project that became the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). The Dictionary began appearing in print in 1884, but the first edition was not completed until 1928, 13 years after editor James Murray's death, costing around £375,000.

Image source: Oxford English Dictionary

By this time, Oxford had a London warehouse for Bible stock in Paternoster Row, and in 1880 its manager, Henry Frowde, was given the formal title of Publisher to the university. Frowde became vital to OUP's growth, adding new lines of books and presiding over the publication of the Revised Version of the New Testament in 1881.

Image source: Oxford University Press

Henry Frowde played a key role in setting up the press's first office outside Britain, in New York City in 1896, marking the start of OUP's international expansion.

By the early 20th century, OUP expanded its overseas trade, partly due to the efforts of Humphrey Milford, the publisher of the University of Oxford from 1913 to 1945. By 1928, the press's imprint read 'London, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leipzig, Toronto, Melbourne, Cape Town, Bombay, Calcutta, Madras and Shanghai'.

In 1923, OUP established a Music Department, driven by a sense of cultural philanthropy and a desire to promote 'national music outside the German mainstream'. It was not until 1939 that the Music Department showed its first profitable year.

Between 1927 and 1934, Oxford University Press, Inc., New York, was reorganized by Geoffrey Cumberlege to return it to profitability from the lows of the Depression years. In 1945–1956, Cumberlege would succeed Milford as publisher to the University of Oxford.

Image source: Muslims

The Depression of 1929 dried profits from the Americas to a trickle, and India became 'the one bright spot' in an otherwise dismal picture for the press's finances.

In February 1989, Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa urging the execution of British author Salman Rushdie and all involved in the publication of The Satanic Verses. There was outrage when, in April 1989, OUP broke the worldwide embargo and chose to attend the Tehran Book Fair.

In 1990, in the UK Court of Appeal, author Andrew Malcolm won a landmark legal judgment against Oxford University (Press) for breach of a contract to publish his philosophical text Making Names. The case ended in July 1992 with a Tomlin order permanently barring Oxford's servants and agents from denigrating Malcolm or Making Names.

In November 1998, OUP announced the closure, on commercial grounds, of its modern poetry list, provoking condemnation from poets, Arts Minister Alan Howarth, and professor Valentine Cunningham. In March 1999, The Times Literary Supplement commissioned Andrew Malcolm to write about why the present constitution of the OUP could not work.

In 1999, campaigner Andrew Malcolm published his second book, The Remedy, in which he alleged that OUP breached its 1978 tax-exemption conditions.

In July 2012, the UK's Serious Fraud Office found OUP's branches in Kenya and Tanzania guilty of bribery to obtain school bookselling contracts sponsored by the World Bank.

In December 2023, concerns were raised that OUP had published an academic paper based on genetic data taken from the Uyghur population of Xinjiang, a Turkic ethnic group in China.

Image source: Uyghurs

In July 2025, OUP ended its publication of Forensic Sciences Research (FSR), a journal sponsored by China's Ministry of Justice, following ethical concerns related to research involving DNA data from Uyghur and other ethnic minorities in China.

Image source: Forensic science

Since 2001, Oxford University Press has financially supported the Clarendon bursary, a University of Oxford graduate scholarship scheme.

In March 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, OUP's Bookshop on the High Street in Oxford closed its doors.

Image source: COVID-19 pandemic

By the end of 2021, OUP USA had published eighteen Pulitzer Prize–winning books, cementing its reputation as a leading publisher of distinguished scholarship and general-interest works.

Image source: Pulitzer Prize

On 27 August 2021, OUP closed Oxuniprint, its printing division. The closure marked the final chapter of OUP's centuries-long history of printing.

As of 2024, OUP as Oxford Journals publishes more than 500 journals on behalf of learned societies around the world, spanning both the sciences and the humanities.