OXFORD University Press watch out, the next generation of publishers is here – and they are going old school.

Apprentice printers have been learning the methods used with Shakespeare’s first folio to print their own 16-page books of poetry.

Paul Nash superintendent of hand printing at the Bodleian Library, pictured left with Stuart Dashwood, has been teaching his pupils on 18th and 19th century printing presses at Oxford’s story museum for three weeks.

Gaelle Jolly, 36, from Marston is printing her own edition of Edgar Allen Poe’s Sonnet to Science.

She said: “I have always been fascinated by old printing processes, but this is the first time I have tried it.

“It is a great chance to use these old presses.”

She has already typeset her book and proofed it, and once it is printed with illustrations she will bind the pages together.

The presses, which were built between 1780 and 1898, belong to the Bodleian Library, which uses them in academic printing courses on literature, history and design.