Richard Day, A Booke of Christian prayers..., 1581 - Printers woodcuts, details. p.90v

Description:The hand-press was well-known to Shakespeare.

In the 1580s when William Shakespeare came to London the Stationers' Company had been established for thirty years, since 1557, and it attempted to control the printing profession by the issue of licences. Even so London had over a hundred licensed freemen printers, with up to four presses each, and between 1580 and 1603 some 4,370 titles were published. Books and pamphlets were sold from stalls (which could be quite substantial buildings), by printer's shops themselves, by pedlars, or by bookbinders, on subjects ranging from religion (Bibles, tracts, sermons, and liturgies) to law books, all aspects of education and information, and literary material of all kinds from poetry to plays and essays.

Full title: Richard Day, A Booke of Christian Prayers collected out of the auncient writers and best learned in our tyme, worthy to be read with earnest mynde of all Christians in these daungerous and troublesome dayes', London, John Daye, 1581.