OXFORD, England— In these recessionary times, can a major publisher survive without ever having printed a cookbook or a step-by-step guide to discovering one's Inner Child? And by continuing to print such popular classics as Paul Dirac's "The Principles of Quantum Mechanics" and the eight-volume "Handbook of the Birds of Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa"?

This is just the sort of thing that the Oxford University Press has thrived on for the past 400 years. The OUP, as it is known to its far- flung international staff, is the largest university press in the world, issuing more than 2,000 titles each year and holding a backlist of nearly 25,000 others. It publishes in more than a dozen countries, including the United States, where its operations are larger than any American university press.

While you won't find OUP representatives bidding for the latest blockbusters by Barbara Cartland or Tom Clancy, the press had no trouble coming up with the £10 million ($15 million) required to produce the second edition of The Oxford English Dictionary.

"As a business, we are very liquid and profitable at the moment," said Andrew Parker, the press's chief accountant. The company's pretax profit has risen steadily over the past five years, to £20.8 million ($30.8 million) last year on sales of £180.3 million.

Chief Executive James Arnold- Baker, who headed BBC Enterprises before he took over at OUP last August, said that the press is "probably the first company I've taken over that was well-managed."

Much of Oxford's success stems from a major expansion of the press's foreign publishing operations, particularly in the field of English-language teaching materials. Yet while the press's bottom line might be the envy of some corporate publishers, it remains a department of the university, and all of its profits are plowed back into scholarly publishing and research.

"Our primary mission is to spread as widely as possible the fruits of scholarship at Oxford University," said Mr. Arnold- Baker. "And that involves us in many projects that commercial publishers would not want to venture into, because some of them can be bottomless pits."

The leading example is the Oxford English Dictionary, generally regarded as the last word on the English language. The second edition, issued in 1989, contained nearly 300,000 entries and more than 600,000 separate words. Yet so quickly do new words enter the language that OUP's 18 lexicographers are already at work on the third edition, scheduled to appear in the year 2005.

"The first edition was published in 1928 and took 50 years to complete," said Edmund Weiner, the dictionary's deputy chief editor. "We've been running to keep up ever since."

The first book printed in Oxford was produced in 1478, and the university press has been in continuous operation since 1584. Since 1633, all decisions about which books to publish have been made by a board of delegates, chaired by the university's vice chancellor and appointed from among the ranks of Oxford scholars.

When Christopher Wren's Sheldonian Theater was completed in 1669, the printing presses were moved into its basement, an arrangement that ultimately proved unsatisfactory - the printers had to stop work every time the theater was needed for a ceremony.

In 1702 the press published its first best-seller, Lord Clarendon's "History of the Great Rebellion." The vice chancellor at the time embezzled the proceeds from the first two editions, but the profits from this work eventually allowed the construction of the Clarendon Building in Oxford's Broad Street, which became OUP's new headquarters. In 1830 the press moved to its present site on Walton Street, although the delegates still hold their twice-monthly meetings in a special room in the Clarendon Building.

The foundations for the modern press were laid in the late 19th century, when the press began to earn considerable profits from sales of the Bible. The Oxford Bible was so successful that a warehouse was set up in London to store the volumes, and it later became a springboard for the publishing of a wide range of books for the general reader.

Today, in addition to its scholarly monographs, dictionaries, and English language materials, the press churns out children's books, school textbooks, medical references, paperback editions of classic literary works, and even poetry and works of music. OUP also publishes more than 140 scholarly periodicals, ranging from the Journal of Theological Studies to Nucleic Acids Research.

Although it may seem that the press has a finger in nearly every pot, Mr. Arnold-Baker said that he is not tempted to venture much further into popular publishing. "We are not interested in new fiction or most of the modern nonfiction business," he said. "This cuts us out of the vast bulk of commercial publishing, but we are already painting on a very broad canvas."

Oxford is eager, however, to expand its activities in electronic publishing, Mr. Arnold-Baker said, despite the fact that this field has not been very profitable so far. The Oxford English Dictionary is now available on compact disk, as are a number of other Oxford reference works.

"I think you are going to see a considerable expansion of electronic publishing in the future," said Mr. Arnold-Baker. "At the moment it's mainly in the sciences, but I am sure it will expand into the arts as well. The big challenge for the academic publishing community will be to figure out who's going to pay for it, and how to deliver it cheaply."

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MICHAEL BALTER is a Paris- based journalist.

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