In mid-Tudor London, the most important printing houses and bookshops were to be found in a comparatively narrow area stretching three-quarters of a mile from the west end of the churchyard of St Clement Danes to the Old Change. Maps 1–3 cover almost all that area, omitting only a short stretch between Ludgate and Creed Lane. In later generations other significant communities of book-traders would grow. But Fleet Street, Paul's, and Paternoster Row would remain the heart of England's book trade for centuries.

In the Strand and Fleet Street (Map 1), buildings that can be identified with the street numbers assigned in the eighteenth century are shown without toning. (The numbers remain largely unchanged except by the amalgamation of small properties into larger buildings.) Small circles indicate the approximate or alternative sites of buildings whose locations have not been determined unambiguously. After the numbered entries for each street I have listed those locatable only by parish, and the last entry is for a printing house whose whereabouts in Fleet Street is completely unknown.