Stationers' Company

Written with astonishing speed and intensity, the work was registered with the Stationers’ Company on 9 January 1624 and published without delay: rarely has such a dramatic affliction had such an immediate literary outcome.

Foreign practice In Great Britain there is no official copyright office, but registration has been made at Stationers' Hall in charge of the Stationers' Company, a quasi public institution, while deposit is made primarily in the national library at the British Museum.

The practice had grown up of granting patents or monopolies to persons for a whole class of books; the Stationers' Company itself held that for almanacs up to a very late period, and the Crown has retained that on the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer to the present day.

A decree in 1548 established a guild of printers and publishers, antedating the charter granted by Queen Mary to the Stationers' Company in London, though later than the organization of the book-fair of Frankfort and of the libraires jur�s in France; and its regulations, aiding the censorship, incidentally defined literary property and protected copyrights.

The Early History of Copyright 8-23 In classic times, 8—Roman law, 8—Monastic copyists, 8—St. Columba and Finnian, 9—University protection, 9—Invention of printing, 10—In Germany, 10—In Italy: Venice, 13—Florence, 17—Control of Church, 17—In France, 17—In England, 19—The Stationers' Company, 21—Statutory provisions, 22.