Cambridge University Press (Cambridge, UK)
Series dates: 1932-1943
Size: 4.25″ x 6.75″
Macmillan & Co., Ltd. (London, UK; New York, US)
Series dates: 1934-1937
Size: 4.25″ x 6.75″
The Cambridge Miscellany, like the Oxford Miscellany, consisted of mostly reprints (some revised or expanded) and a few new titles, including fiction, poetry, literary studies, history, memoirs, psychology, drama, and religion. The Times Literary Supplement of September 8, 1932 (p. 616) first announces the series, with volumes available in October of 1932:
An advertisement for the first nine titles in the new series appears in December of 1932 (The Times Literary Supplement, December 15, 1932, p. 961):
Macmillan published some of the titles in the US. The advertisement below, from the Saturday Review, appeared in the May 4, 1935 issue (p. 27). Eleven titles, at $1.00 or $1.25, are available.
One of the last advertisements for the series appeared in The Times Literary Supplement in the August 28, 1943 issue (p. 411).
The Cambridge Miscellany eventually consisted of 19 titles issued between 1932 and 1937. Not all were published in the U.S. While there are a few reprints after WW2, by and large, the series can be ended around 1943.
This copy of G.G. Coulton’s Two Saints: St. Bernard & St. Frances, is #4 in the series and was issued in the series initial year (1932). Jackets for the series are common in design to all titles. The US jackets are very similar, with “The Macmillan Company” along the bottom of the front of the jacket (along with other minor differences).
The jacket spine includes the author, title, series name and series number. The jacket front includes the series name, a series colophon (what I believe is the Clare Bridge at Cambridge University), title, author and a brief description of the book. This particular title contains two chapters from Coulton’s Five Centuries of Religion, reset and with illustrations. The front jacket flap provides a prospectus for the series: small, uniform books with a diversity of content, including a few potential titles (the study of Robert Bridges did not appear, but Gunning’s Reminiscences of Cambridge did appear, as series number 8). The price of 4s. net is included.
The back of the jacket lists the first 6 titles, priced at 3s/6d, but blanked out. This price change may explain the strange location of the price on the front jacket flap: the original 3s./6d price was clipped by the publisher and 4s. net. was added to the jacket flap.
A list of the 19 titles issued in the series between 1932 and 1937 is below. Macmillan published a subset (#) in the U.S. A few titles were reprinted after 1960 by Cambridge and a few other US library reprint companies.
# I. Small Talk at Wreyland, by Cecil Torr (1932)
# *II. Marlborough & Other Poems, by Charles Sorley (1932)
# III. A Small Boy in the Sixties, by George Sturt (1932)
# ** *** ****IV. Two Saints: St. Bernard & St. Frances, by G.G. Colton (1932)
V. The Influence of Christ in the Ancient World, by T.R. Glover (1932)
VI. The Small Years, by Frank Kendon (1932)
# *VII. Anecdotes of Samuel Johnson, by Hester Lynch Piozzi, S.C. Roberts (1932)
# *VIII. Reminiscences of Cambridge, by Henry Gunning, D.A. Winstanley (1932)
# *IX. Horace: A Return to Allegiance, by T.R. Glover (1932)
*X. Something Beyond, by A.F. Webling (1933)
*XI. An Eighteenth-Century Gentleman and Other Essays, by S.C. Roberts (1933)
# XII. The World of the New Testament, by T.R. Glover (1933)
*XIII. Nature and Life, by Alfred North Whitehead (1934)
# * **XIV. Shakespeare, by George Saintsbury, Helen Waddell (1934)
# XV. The Problem of Noise, by Frederic Charles Bartlett (1934)
# * **XVI. The Study of Drama, by Harley Granville-Barker (1934)
XVII. The Four Gospels (1935)
*XVIII. Oliver Cromwell and the English People, by Ernest Barker (1937)
XIX. Charles Lamb and his Contemporaries, by Edmund Blunden (1937)
# Issued by Macmillan in the U.S.
*Reissued by Cambridge University Press, 1967-2011
**Reissued by Folcroft Library Editions, 1972-1979
***Reissued by Norwood Editions, 1976-1978
****Reissued by R. West, 1977
The books are bound in maroon cloth with gold typography and decorations. The series name is included on the base of the spine.
The half-title page with the series name, colophon (an unusual addition to the half-title-page), series number and title.
Information about both Cambridge University Press, Macmillan, and the Japanese publisher Maruzen face the title page. I can’t find any copies of the Cambridge Miscellany with a Maruzen imprint (they may have distributed the titles in Japan). The title page with date (1932) follows.
The dedication. “Printed in Great Britain.”
On the final page: Printed by W. Lewis, M.A., at the University Press.”
