Baskett was apprenticed to the stationer Edward Darrell from 1682 to 1690. As a young stationer, he secured various lucrative contracts to supply paper to the university press at Oxford as well as the Treasury and Customs House. Baskett’s career shifted dramatically after 1710 when the patent for King’s Printer expired. The former patentees owed Baskett over £8000 and he manipulated this debt to acquire a half-share in the King’s Printer patent. He built on this success to become Queen’s Printer in 1712 as well as securing more lucrative patents, including a share in the Queen’s Printer in Scotland patent and a share in the Oxford University printing monopoly. At the peak of his powers, Baskett served two terms as Master of the Stationers’ Company. He carefully guarded his privileges and brought nearly 40 cases against infringements. The patents did not come without any risks, however, and in 1729 Baskett was declared bankrupt. It took him seven careful years to regrow his finances. He died in 1742 and was able to leave substantial legacies and patent rights to his family.
Samuel Bentley was born on 10 May 1785. He was the eldest surviving son of Edward Bentley (b. 1753), publisher and principal of the accountant's office at the Bank of England, and his wife Anne Nichols, only sister of the printer and publisher John Nichols (1745-1826). Bentley was educated at St Paul's School, London alongside his nephew John Bentley. Upon leaving school on 4 June 1799, he was apprenticed at Stationer's Hall to his maternal uncle John Nichols. Nichols had been apprenticed at Stationers' Hall on 6 February 1759 under his Master William Bowyer (1699-1777) and after serving his apprenticeship, Nichols was taken into partnership with Bowyer in 1766. The Nichols family were printers and publishers. With Bentley's father Edward, John Nichols published the 'General Evening Post' and on his own he printed, published, edited, and contributed articles to the 'Gentleman's Magazine'. His firm printed the House of Lords Journals and were appointed printers of the Society of Antiquaries and the Royal Society. He was one of the agents behind the first complete publication of the Domesday Book in 1783. John Nichols was active in the Worshipful Company of Stationer's throughout his career and he was made Master in 1804.
Bentley served his apprenticeship with Nichols and took on his younger brother Richard Bentley (1794-1871) as an apprentice at Stationer's Hall on 6 December 1808. Bentley entered into partnership in the firm of Nichols, Son, and Bentley in April 1812. In 1819 Bentley left the firm and joined his brother Richard Bentley in inaugurating the printing and publishing firm of S. and R. Bentley, located at 107 Dorset Street, Salisbury Square, London. This enterprise rapidly established itself as among the best printers in London. In 1829 Richard Bentley withdrew from the firm. Bentley took on his nephew John as junior partner and in later years the firm expanded to become Bentley, Wilson, and Fley, with larger quarters at Bangor House, Shoe Lane, London.
Bentley edited John Nichols' 'Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century' (1812-16) and Robert Surtees's 'History … of Durham' (1816-40). In 1816 Bentley edited and wrote Latin prefaces for 'Concio de puero Jesu', composed by Desiderius Erasmus and dedicated to the headmaster of St Paul's School, London. Bentley's major antiquarian work was the 'Excerpta Historica', a quarterly periodical reissued as a royal octavo in 1831. Bentley was assisted in this compilation by notable antiquaries: Sir Nicholas Harris Nicolas (1799-1848); Sir Charles George Young (1795-1869), Garter king of arms; William Henry Black (1808-1872); and Sir Thomas Duffus Hardy (1804-1878), deputy keeper of the Public Record Office from 1861. Bentley helped Sir Nicholas Harris Nicolas prepare for private publication the 'Scrope and Grosvenor Controversy' published in 1832. In 1836 Bentley printed for private circulation 'An abstract of charters and other documents contained in a cartulary of the abbey of St. Peter, Westminster, in the possession of S. Bentley'.
By April 1853 blindness compelled Bentley to abandon his business and discontinue the firm. He retired to Croydon with his wife Sarah Charlotte, whom he had married in 1825. He died at North End, Croydon, on 13 April 1868. He was survived by his wife but they had no children.
Bishop served his apprenticeship to Elizabeth Toy from 1556 to 1562. His early career was spent working with London bookseller Lucas Harrison to import unbound books and maps from Antwerp. Bishop and Harrison appear in the records of Antwerp printer Christophe Plantin, visiting and buying books from the famed Plantin printing house. Bishop was one of very few British booksellers to sell at the Frankfurt bookfair and was listed in the Frankfurt catalogues 1594-1605. He was an important publisher at home too, and was involved in the production and costs of major works including, John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments, John Stow’s Annals of England, as well as editions from Ralphael Holinshed, William Camden, and Richard Hakluyt. Bishop was a dedicated member of the Stationers’ Company. He was elected to the livery in 1568 and served as Master five times: 1590, 1592, 1600, 1602, and 1608; and was twice elected to serve remaining terms when an incumbent Master died (1593, 1603). Between 1588 and 1599, he managed the Queen’s printing house as Christopher Barker’s deputy. Bishop’s will, proved in 1611, left his property in Shropshire to the Company as well as money for the Company’s poor.
Blount was educated at the Merchant Taylors’ School, giving him a knowledge of Latin, Italian, and literary quality. He was apprenticed to notable Elizabethan publisher, William Ponsonby, for ten years from 1578. Blount has been described as ‘the most important publisher of the early seventeenth century’. His keen interest in European scholarship and languages was reflected in his publications, which boasted translated works, European travel accounts, and John Florio’s dictionaries. Of course, Blount’s most famous publication remains the first folio edition of Shakespeare’s plays. Other significant Blount publications include works by Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, George Chapman, Samuel Daniel, John Lyly, and Thomas Hobbes. He was a respected member of the Stationers’ Company, elected liveryman in 1611 and to the Court of Assistants in 1625. After his death, Blount’s widow, Elizabeth, sold his copyrights to Andrew Crooke.
Carnan was born in Reading, son of the printer William Carnan. However, when his father died shortly after his birth, his mother married the journeyman John Newbery and the family moved to London in 1744. Carnan worked in his stepfather’s business with Newbery’s nephew, Francis. He was refused the freedom of the Stationers’ Company in 1755. Following Newbery’s death, Carnan and Francis entered a publishing partnership. They specialised in publishing hugely popular diaries, calendars, and pocket-books, which, in their contents, were remarkably similar to that of an almanac. The Stationers’ Company, feeling their monopoly over almanacs threatened, issued an injunction against Carnan to cease selling these works. Carnan answered them in court and in 1775, the case was found in his favour. However, he was not so successful in challenging the monopoly of the King’s Printers nor in preventing increased stamp duty on sheet almanacs. When Carnan died in 1788 and no doubt against the deceased’s wishes, the executors of his state sold his almanac interests to the Stationers’ Company.
Crooke served his apprenticeship to bookseller Roger Potts from1622 to 1629. He thereafter set up shop at ‘the sign of Green Dragon’, which sign, despite moving premises, he kept for the entirety of his career. Crooke slowly but surely climbed the ranks of the Stationers’ Company. He took the livery in 1638 and was elected to the Court of Assistants in 1653. Crooke served as both under-warden (1660-1661) and upper-warden (1663-1664) before completing two terms as Master of the Company (1665-1667). Outside the Company, Crooke was also the representative of Farringdon Within for the city of London’s common council (1656-1657, 1659-1663, 1667). Crooke is perhaps best remembered as Thomas Hobbes’s publisher. He entered Leviathan, Hobbe’s most famous and most controversial work, in the Stationers’ Register in 1651. Crooke though was not only Hobbe’s publisher, but his agent more widely. He was responsible for a large part of Hobbes’s correspondence, which was directed through Crooke’s shop. From as early as 1673, Crooke’s nephew William succeeded to this position as Hobbe’s man and thereafter managed the philosopher’s letters, both written and printed. Andrew Crooke died on 20 September 1674.
Curtis served his apprenticeship to Thomas Matthews from 1659 to 1666. Less than a month after completing his apprenticeship, he married Jane Evans and together they set up as booksellers on Ludgate Hill near Fleet Bridge. Curtis first registered a copy with the Company Register on 16 February 1669, entitled The Quakers Spirituall Cort Proclaymed. He and his wife Jane were responsible for numerous scandalous and seditious works and consequently in near constant trouble with the authorities. The Curtis’ most incendiary works were carefully timed political commentaries, such as A Pacquet of Advice from Rome, a weekly sheet first released in 1678, coinciding with the frenzy of the Popish Plot; Scroggs upon Scroggs (1681) satirising Lord Chief Justice William Scroggs; and Lord Russell’s Ghost (1683) on the Whig martyr Lord William Russelll. It was publications like these, which has seen Curtis labelled a Whig publisher, further consolidated by his newspaper the True Protestant Mercury. Langley Curtis’s final imprint is dated 1690. He appears to have died in 1693 in Ireland.
Danter’s reputation is stained to this day by his responsibility for the ‘bad’ quarto of Romeo and Juliet. His career in the book trade, however, had a promising start. He was bound to one of the most prestigious printers of the day, John Day, in 1682. Day, though, died only two years later and it took four long years for Danter to be turned over to a new master, Robert Robinson. In the intervening period, Danter with a group of other printers engaged in pirating two grammar books. They were caught and banned from ever becoming master printers. Fortunately for Danter, two years after being freed, the Stationers’ dismissed the restriction and he was allowed to set up in partnership William Hoskins and Henry Chettle in 1591. The partnership was short-lived and Danter ventured out as an independent printer, specialising in broadside ballads and helped by a close working relationship with satirist Thomas Nashe. In 1594, Danter entered the quarto edition of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus in the Company Register. Yet without lucrative patents and struggling to find work, Danter resorted to piracy. In 1597, the same year that he printed the ‘bad' quarto of Romeo and Juliet, his premises were raided and his press seized and destroyed for printing the Jesus Psalter.
Memorialised by John Dunton as ‘a True Assertor of English liberties’, John Darby’s printing career includes some of the key radical texts of the seventeenth century. Darby was born in Diseworth, Leicestershire. He was apprenticed to John Hyde in 1647, though later transferred to Peter Cole, and was freed in 1660. Darby can first be linked to radical printing through his early work as a journeyman for printers Simon and Joan Dover. The Dovers specialised in illicit printing of radical and non-conformist texts. In fact, Simon died whilst imprisoned for seditious printing in 1664. John married the widowed Joan and together they moved to new premises in Bartholomew Close and continued to be involved with illicit printing for the duration of their careers. Darby simultaneously engaged with an active, legitimate business printing scientific and navigational works, and the underground production of libels and radical tracts, most famously the prose writings of Andrew Marvell and Samuel Johnson. He was often subject to surveillance and investigations from Surveyor of the Press, Sir Roger L’Estrange. In his later years, Darby worked closely with John Toland to produce new editions of key Whig texts, such as the works of John Milton, Edmund Ludlow, and Algernon Sidney. Darby remained a respected member of the Stationers’ Company and was elevated to liveryman in 1689 and served as Renter-warden (1694-1695).
Sir Thomas Davies was the first of very few stationers to become Lord Mayor of London. Born in London and educated at St. Paul’s School, Davies was apprenticed in 1648 to bookseller, Thomas Whitaker, whilst also being bound to his father in the Drapers’ Company. He was freed of the Stationers’ Company in 1655 and set up as a bookseller in St Paul’s Churchyard. Davies took the livery in 1664. He was able to become increasingly involved in London civic life after inheriting a fortune from his great-uncle Hugh Audley (d.1662). In 1667, Davies was made alderman and knighted in quick succession, and was consequently elected to Company Assistant and shortly after Master of the Stationers’ Company. Upon his election to Lord Mayor of London in 1676, Davies transferred to the Drapers’ Company as only a liveryman of one of the Twelve Great Companies could hold the mayoralty. Following his tenure as Lord Mayor, Davies served as Master of the Drapers’ Company and Colonel of the Orange Regiment.
John Day was a leading member of the Elizabethan book trade. His early years remain obscure, but he was printing in London from 1546. Working in partnership with William Seres, Day seized upon the opportunities presented by the accession of Edward VI. With the regulations against Protestant and evangelical works removed, Day and Seres published authors including John Hooper, Hugh Latimer, and John Calvin. In 1550, Day dissolved his partnership with Seres and transferred from the Stringers’ Company to the Stationers’ Company. In 1553, he secured the patent to publish works by Thomas Becon and John Ponet. The reign of Mary proved challenging for the evangelical printer and he was briefly imprisoned in 1554, but Elizabeth’s accession saw him restored to prominence. Under Elizabeth, Day collected major printing patents so that he controlled the publication of some of the period’s most lucrative works, including the ABC with Little Catechism and English psalter. His most ambitious and significant publication was John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. Day’s success and ever-growing monopolies of lucrative books did not make him a popular figure in the trade. In 1573, there was an attempt on his life and in 1584 he was forced to hand the rights to thirty books to the Stationers’ Company. He died whilst travelling to visit his wife’s family in Suffolk, leaving a hefty and complex inheritance for his son, Richard Day, who inherited his business.
Field was born in Stratford upon Avon. He was apprenticed to George Bishop in 1579 but spent the majority of his apprenticeship serving the Huguenot printer, Thomas Vautrollier. Field was freed by Bishop in 1587. He hired the now deceased Vautrollier’s widow, Jacqueline to print his first publication. Field and Vautrollier soon wed and through this union Field inherited the substantial business of the Vautrolliers and its courtly contacts. Field printed the works of Sir John Harrington, Sir Philip Sidney, George Puttenham, and Edmund Spenser, and secured the rights to King James’s Poeticall Exercises. Yet the most famous author associated with Field is none other than William Shakespeare. Field published Shakespeare’s first printed work, Venus and Adonis (1593) and printed its following three editions as well as The Rape of Lucrece (1593). He was a respected member of the Stationers’ Company, elected first to the livery in 1598 and then the Court of Assistants in 1604. Field served as Upper-warden in 1613 and was elected Master twice, in 1619 and 1622. His former apprentice George Miller inherited the business after Field’s death.
The founder of Guy’s Hospital was by trade a bookseller. Age eight, Guy’s father died, and the family moved to his mother’s hometown of Tamworth. Here, Guy was likely educated at Tamworth Grammar School until, in 1660, he was apprenticed to London bookseller John Clarke. Guy was freed of the Stationers’ Company in 1668 and made a freeman of the City of London. In 1673, he was admitted to the livery of the Company. His early career was defined by a defiance of Company patents. He was found importing Dutch Bibles and in 1679, Guy and fellow bookseller Peter Parker were selected by John Fell, Bishop of Oxford, to set up a press for the university and produce Bibles. A long legal battle ensued between Guy, Parker and the university and the Stationers’ Company. However, in 1691 the Company were triumphant, having removed Guy and Parker from their Oxford contract. Nonetheless, Guy was a highly successful bookseller and businessman, aided by successful investments in the South Sea Company. He turned his wealth to philanthropy, particularly aiding his childhood home of Tamworth. Here, he founded an alms house with a library, donated to the grammar school, and workhouses. Guy served as MP for Tamworth 1695-1708. In 1704, he became a governor of St Thomas’s Hospital and in 1721 bought land to build a new hospital in London, which would become Guy’s Hospital. Thomas Guy died in 1724. His remains were later interred in the crypt at Guy’s Hospital.
Hayward was an English artist, known especially for his stained glass work. He was a fellow of the British Society of Master Glass Painters. Hayward's stained glass windows can be found across England, from churches in London to university colleges. Particularly notable examples of Hayward's work include windows at Sherborne Abbey and Norwich Cathedral, as well as sculpture and murals at Blackburn Cathedral.
Hills came to prominence as a printer for the New Model Army at Oxford. At the request of Lieutenant-General Charles Fleetwood, he was made free of the Stationers' Company, and in 1655 he secured privileges to print English bibles and psalters, previously held by the king's printers and the Stationers' Company respectively. Although briefly imprisoned after the Stuart Restoration of 1660, by 1677 he had regained sufficient official favour to be appointed one of the king's printers alongside Thomas Newcombe. In 1678 he was elected to the Court (executive body) of the Stationers' Company. Hills reached the peak of his success and influence under James II. His conversion to Catholicism and loyalty to the King saw him rewarded with the new position of printer to the royal household and chapel. It was with James’s favour that Hills survived the purges of the livery companies in 1687 and rose to hold the highest Company office of Master. However, the deposition of the Stuarts in the 'Glorious Revolution' of 1688 heralded a reversal of fortune for Hills, who fled to St Omer in December 1688, leaving his premises to be raided and destroyed by an anti-Catholic mob.