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.
John Playford was one of the most important publishers of music in the seventeenth century. He was born in Norwich and served seven years as apprentice to London stationer John Benson 1640-1647. Playford quickly specialised in music publications and established a bookshop by Temple Church. He took the livery in 1661, and it is from that year we find him supplying the Chapel Royal. Playford continued to enjoy royal favour, and it was the King’s influence which saw him elected to the Court of Assistants in 1681. Playford held shares in the English Stock from 1675. He was a close friend of the age’s finest musicians, including John Blow and Henry Purcell, the latter of whom composed an elegy for Playford on his death. He is buried in Temple Church.
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.
Royston was a prolific bookseller and publisher in the seventeenth-century. Over a long career in the trade, he published over 800 books, including the works of notable writers such as John Donne and Thomas Heywood. He served his apprenticeship from 1617 to 1627, initially to Josias Harrison before being turned over to John Grismond. Royston was a staunch royalist throughout the Civil Wars and Interregnum and was periodically imprisoned for publishing pamphlets critical of parliament. His loyalty was rewarded after the Restoration when the King granted him the monopoly for the works of Charles I. Moreover, it was the King’s intervention that saw Royston admitted to the Company Court of Assistants in 1663. To reflect his elevation in the Company, Royston was also admitted to the livery around this time. He proved a problematic figure for the Stationers’ Company, and was often reprimanded for infringing Company printing rights, and others’ copies. Royston enjoyed the affluent post of stationer to the court of Charles II.
Tonson served his apprenticeship to stationer Thomas Basset and was freed 7 January 1678. During the early years of his career, he published works jointly with his brother Richard Tonson. Jacob Tonson’s first major publishing success was John Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel (1681). He soon bought up the rights to Dryden’s earlier works and became his exclusive publisher. Other major writers published by Tonson include Aphra Behn and the Earl of Rochester. Tonson and Dryden collaborated on a highly successful series of anthologies, including Ovid’s Epistles (1680) and Plutarch’s Lives, but also poetry miscellanies which featured Dryden’s own poems alongside budding new writers, such as the young Alexander Pope from 1709. Tonson’s impeccable eye for literary quality was demonstrated again when he purchased the rights for Milton’s Paradise Lost. In 1686, he was promoted to Company liveryman. Publishing work aside, Tonson was engaged in political affairs and was a founding member of the Kit-Cat Club, a famed but exclusive group of Whig politicians. His nephew, Jacob Tonson the younger, worked at and inherited the Tonson business.
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.
Norton served his apprenticeship to his uncle, the London bookseller, William Norton from 1578 to 1586. From 1587, Norton was often found in Edinburgh, where he was importing books from Germany, especially after having secured a license to import books duty free into Scotland in 1589. The Scottish business weakened, however, after losing legal cases against other Edinburgh booksellers and Norton sold the business off entirely in 1596. Meanwhile in London, his first publication was a tract by Beza in 1590. Some of Norton’s more notable later publications included John Gerard’s Herbal (1597) and James I & VI’s Basilicon Doron (1603). John Bill was bound as an apprentice to Norton in 1592 and would go on to become his lifelong business partner, often travelling to continental Europe as Norton’s agent. In 1605, Norton, Bill and Norton’s cousin, Bonham Norton, formed an official publishing partnership under the imprint Officina Nortoniana. As a member of the Stationers’ Company, Norton was elected to the livery in 1598. He rose through the ranks of the Company after being elected an Assistant in 1602, serving as Upper-warden and Master for terms apiece. By the time of his death in 1612, Norton was an incredibly wealthy bookseller and left £1000 to the Company in his will.
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.
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.
From 1730, Newbery was working as a journeyman for the printer William Carnan in Reading. Upon Carnan’s death, Newbery took over the running of the Reading Mercury and married Carnan’s widow, Mary. The family moved to London in 1744. Newbery became an important early publisher of works for children. He was an innovative and intelligent businessman, issuing the first children’s periodical and the first children’s encyclopaedia, advertising widely, offering discounts to teachers buying in bulk, and publishing other bestsellers, from the annual Ladies Complete Pocket-Book to works by Samuel Richardson and Oliver Goldsmith. From 1751, Newbery also published the works of poet Christopher Smart, a bond strengthened when his stepdaughter Anna Maria Carnan married Smart in 1752. He died a wealthy man in 1767 and was succeeded in business by his son, Francis Newbery. In recognition of Newbery’s contribution to children’s literature, the Newbery medal, introduced in 1922 in the United States, is awarded every year to an outstanding book for children.