The Stationers� Company was incorporated by royal charter circa 1556, and for a time it preserved the sole right of printing in England, while it had a monopoly of the publishing of almanacks down to 1771. Until the passing of the Copyright Act of 1911 every work published in Great Britain had to be registered for copyright at Stationers� Hall. The registers go back to 1557 and are a mine of interesting material. The hall (visitors usually admitted on ringing the bell to the left of the door) contains a painting by Benjamin West (King Alfred sharing his bread with St. Cuthbert and other pilgrims), a stained-glass window in memory of Caxton (1894), and portraits of Steele, Prior, Samuel Richard-son (Master of the Company in 1754), and his second wife, these last by Joseph Highmore. Among other relics are Mozart's snuff-box and the composing stick used by Benjamin Franklin when a journeyman printer in London. A Bible printed by the Company in 1631 omitted the word 'not' from the seventh commandment. An old plane-tree in the court between Stationers' Hall and St. Martin's marks the spot where seditious books used to be burned.
Amen Court, a curiously quiet little nook in the heart of London is entered by a wooden gate at the west end of Paternoster Row. It contains the dwellings of the Canons Residentiary of St. Paul's, which Wren is supposed to have built. Some of the house-doors still retain their old link-extinguishers. R. H. Barbara (1788-1845), author of 'The Ingoldsby Legends' and a minor canon of St. Paul's, died at No. 1.
For St. Paul's and St. Paul's Churchyard, see Walk 25.
