He was sent to the printers Woodfall & Kinder in London at the age of fourteen, and was apprenticed to the compositor’s trade two years later.

He left Ballantyne Press in 1880, when he was appointed manager of the head office and main works of William Clowes & Sons, which was then the biggest printing house in Britain.

He left, however, after only three years at Clowes, when vacancy for Controller of the Oxford University Press (OUP) was advertised.

During that time, he convinced the Press to begin using wood-pulp paper, and also introduced collotype and printing by lithography.

A final, severe breakdown led to his retirement from the OUP in 1915 at the age of seventy-five.