In 1403, the
Corporation of London approved the formation of a
guild of
stationers. At this time, the occupations considered stationers for the purposes of the guild were text writers,
limners (illuminators),
bookbinders or
booksellers who worked at a fixed location (
stationarius) beside the walls of St Paul's Cathedral. Booksellers sold manuscript books, or copies thereof produced by their respective firms for retail; they also sold writing materials. Illuminators illustrated and decorated manuscripts. Printing gradually displaced manuscript production so that, by the time the guild received a royal charter of incorporation on 4 May 1557, it had in effect become a printers' guild. In 1559, it became the 47th in
city livery company precedence. At the time, it was based at Peter's College, which it bought from
St Paul's Cathedral. During the
Tudor and
Stuart periods, the Stationers were legally empowered to seize "offending books" that violated the standards of content set down by the Church and state; its officers could bring "offenders" before ecclesiastical authorities, usually the
Bishop of London or the
Archbishop of Canterbury, depending on the severity of the transgression. Thus the Stationers played an important role in the culture of England through the intensely turbulent decades of the
Protestant Reformation and toward the
English Civil War. The Stationers' Charter, which codified its
monopoly on book production, ensured that once a member had asserted ownership of a text or "copy" by having it approved by the company, no other member was entitled to publish it, that is, no one else had the "right to copy" it. This is the origin of the term "
copyright". However, this original "right to copy" in England was different from the modern conception of copyright. The stationers' "copy right" was a protection granted to the printers of a book; "copyright" introduced with the
Statute of Anne, or the Copyright Act 1710, was a right granted to the author(s) of a book based on statutory law. Members of the company could, and mostly did, document their ownership of copyright in a work by entering it in the "entry book of copies" or the
Stationers' Company Register. The Register of the Stationers' Company thus became one of the most essential documentary records in the later study of
English Renaissance theatre. (In 1606 the
Master of the Revels, who was responsible until this time for licensing plays for performance, acquired some overlapping authority over licensing them for publication as well; but the Stationers' Register remained a crucial and authoritative source of information after that date too.) Enforcement of such rules was always a challenge, in this area as in other aspects of the Tudor/Stuart regime. Works were often printed surreptitiously and illegally, and this would remain a subject of interest to both the Company and the government into the modern period. In 1603, the Stationers formed the English Stock, a joint stock publishing company funded by shares held by members of the company. This profitable venture gave the Company a monopoly on printing certain types of works, including almanacs, prayer-books, and primers, some of the best-selling works of the day. By buying and holding shares in the English Stock (which were limited in number), members of the company received a nearly guaranteed return each year. The English Stock at times employed out-of-work printers, and disbursed some of the profit to the poor and to those reliant on the Company's pensions. When a printer or bookseller who held a share died, it might often pass to another relation, most often his widow. In 1611, the company bought Abergavenny House in
Ave Maria Lane and moved out of Peter's College. The new
hall burnt down in the
Great Fire of 1666, along with most of its contents, including a great number of books. The Company's clerk, George Tokefeild, is said to have removed a great number of the Company's records to his home in the suburbs—without this act, much of the Company's history before 1666 would have been lost. It was rebuilt by 1674, and its present interior is much as it was when it reopened. The Court Room was added in 1748, and in 1800 the external façade was remodelled to its present form. In 1695, the monopoly power of the Stationers' Company was diminished by the lapsing of their monopoly on printing, allowing presses to operate more freely outside of London than they had previously. The stationers petitioned Parliament for new censorship legislation, and when that failed they argued that authors had a natural and inherent right of ownership in what they wrote (knowing there was little an author could do with such rights other than sign them over to a publisher). This argument persuaded the Parliament and in 1710
Parliament passed the
Copyright Act 1709, the first such act to establish copyright as the purview of authors, not printers or publishers. In 1861, the company established the
Stationers' Company's School at Bolt Court,
Fleet Street for the education of sons of members of the Company. In 1894, the school moved to
Hornsey in north London, eventually closing nearly a century later in 1983. Registration under the
Copyright Act 1911 ended in December 1923; the company then established a voluntary register in which copyrights could be recorded to provide printed proof of ownership in case of disputes. In 1937, a royal charter amalgamated the Stationers' Company and the Newspaper Makers' Company, which had been founded six years earlier (and whose members were predominant in
Fleet Street), into the company of the present name. In March 2012, the company established the "Young Stationers", to provide a forum for young people (under the age of 40) within the company and the civic City of London more broadly. This led to the establishment of the
Young Stationers' Prize in 2014, which recognises outstanding achievements within the company's trades. Prize winners have included novelist
Angela Clarke, journalist Katie Glass, and professor of journalism
Dr Shane Tilton. The company's
motto is
Verbum Domini manet in aeternum,
Latin for "The Word of the Lord endures forever;" which appears on their
heraldic charge. In November 2020 Stationers' Hall the home of the Stationers' Company were granted approval to redevelop their Grade I
listed building to bring modern day conference facilities, air-cooling and step free access to its historic rooms. It reopened in July 2022 for live events, weddings, and filming. ==Trades==