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.
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.
Jacqueline and Thomas Vautrollier arrived in London as Huguenot refugees from France. They set up as printers in London in the 1560s. Jacqueline played an active role in the Vautrollier printing business. When her husband Thomas was working in Edinburgh, she ran their printing house back in London. Despite the Vautrolliers not being free of the Stationers’ Company through special permissions and patents, even after Thomas’s death, they maintained a steady flow of publications. In 1588, the widowed Jacqueline is reported to have printed a Greek New Testament and Martin Luther’s Commentarie on Galatians. In 1589, Vautrollier married her husband’s former apprentice, Richard Field. She was therefore likely involved in the impressive line of works known to be produced by Field at this time, including the poems of William Shakespeare, Sir Philip Sidney, and Edmund Spenser.
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.
Vautrollier arrived in London as one of the many Huguenot exiles fleeing France in the late sixteenth century. He received his letters of denization in 1562 and was later admitted to the Stationers’ Company in 1564 as a ‘brother’, rather than a freeman (reflecting his status as a foreigner). Vautrollier occupied a particular niche in the English book trade, offering translations of French books, and his printing exhibiting the sophisticated French style yet to reach England. His Protestant leanings were evident in his printing work, with publications including the writings of noted theologians such as Martin Luther and Edmund Bunny. Vautrollier secured patents in 1573 and 1574 for various Latin texts, including works by Cicero, Ovid, and Beza. He fled London for Scotland briefly in the 1580s, after printing the writings of Giordano Bruno induced the wrath of the Privy Council. Here, he supplied books to the young James VI. Vautrollier returned to London in 1585 and died in 1587, leaving the printing business to his wife Jacqueline, who had managed their printing affairs in London during Thomas’s time in Scotland.
One of three daughters of the printers Andrew Sowle and Jane Sowle who went into the book trade, Tace Sowle inherited the management of the family printing house and her father’s post as printer to the Society of Friends. She was freed of the Stationers’ Company by patrimony in 1695. Tace Sowle’s tenure as head of the Sowle press was the most active and prolific period of the Sowle press. John Dunton also noted her skill as a compositor. Tace eventually married in 1706 but took precautions to retain her independence and family’s control of the press. She adopted the compound surname Sowle Raylton and appointed her mother, Jane Sowle, as nominal head of the Sowle press. Tace outlived her husband by over twenty years. She died in 1749 and was buried at Bunhill Fields. For fifty-eight years she was the important Quaker printer in Britain.
After the death of her husband, printer David Mallet, in 1683, Elizabeth became the operator of their two printing presses in Black Horse Alley, near Fleet Bridge. She specialised in lurid and sensational tracts, registering a great number of such works with the Stationers’ Company. Mallet also produced serial publications, such as The New State of Europe, and, most famously, the first ten issues of the Daily Courant, the first daily newspaper in Britain.
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).
Born in Leicestershire, Starkey served his apprenticeship to the bookseller John Sawywell from 1646 to 1655. He quickly established himself in a shop on Fleet Street, where he gained a reputation for publishing and selling the writings of controversial political theorists, such as George Lawson, James Harrington, and John Milton. Starkey’s single most significant publication was the first printed translation of Machiavelli’s Works in 1675. It has been suggested that Starkey himself was the translator, though it is more often attributed to Henry Neville (another of Starkey’s authors). His bookshop by Temple Bar was watched by authorities from as early as 1675, initially for Starkey’s alarming knowledge and news of parliamentary affairs, but by 1679 it had become meeting place for the Green Ribbon Club. In the fallout following the Rye House Plot, Starkey fled to Amsterdam, where he communed with radical thinkers again, including John Locke. In 1688, he assisted the Dutch campaign by publishing Williamite propaganda. Once returned to England, Starkey was chosen as an Assistant for the Stationers’ Company, but refused to take his seat when he was placed in the lowest place, which though appropriate as the newest Assistant, did not reflect his many years in the trade. He died shortly afterwards with the matter unresolved.
Newcomb was born in Dunchurch, Warwickshire. He was bound to the printer Gregory Dexter on 8 November 1641 and freed by Dexter and Richard Cotes after serving seven years apprenticeship. After attaining the freedom of the Company, Newcomb married the widow Ruth Raworth and succeeded to her deceased husband’s business on Thames Street. He was elected to the livery in 1653. After the Restoration, and despite printing extensive Commonwealth literature during the Interregnum, Newcomb was appointed to manage the King’s Printing House. His print output included such notable texts as the first printed English translation of a work by Descartes, A Discourse of a Method (1649), but Newcomb was known predominantly for his printing of newsbooks and periodicals. Newcomb printed, for example, Mercurius Politicus (1651-1660), the Public Intelligencer (1655-1660), Mercurius Publicus (1656-1660), the Parliamentary Intelligencer (1656-1660), and the London Gazette (1665-1688). The Fire of London forced him to relocate to the Savoy in 1666. In 1675, he was elected to the Stationer Court of Assistants and in 1677 Newcomb was formally recognised as King’s Printer. He died on 26 December 1681, and his body was laid in state in Stationers’ Hall before being taken to Dunchurch for burial.
John Streater was a soldier, printer, and political pamphleteer. He was born in Lewes and apprenticed to the printer Robert Hoskins on 4 Aug 1635. Streater’s apprenticeship was disrupted by the breakout of the English Civil War and he left printing to join the parliamentary army, only returning when he was wounded in combat. Streater therefore did not gain the freedom of the Company until 1644. He quickly thereafter rejoined the parliamentary army and served three years in Ireland. In London once again in 1653, Streater turned pamphleteer to protest Cromwell’s dissolution of the Rump Parliament. Inspired by great republican thinkers, like John Milton and James Harrington, Streater’s polemical pamphlets saw him imprisoned for a period. From 1660, he focused on building up his printing house, having as many as five presses at one time and his appeal to serve parliament as printer saw him rewarded with an exemption from the 1662 Printing Act. Streater spent the Restoration period working with Richard Atkyns to secure a patent for printing law books in defiance of the Stationers’ Company monopoly. Years of hard work came to nought and Streater died in debtors’ prison in 1677. Both his widow Susan and son Joseph continued the printing business and proved further nuisances to the authorities.
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 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.
Andrew Sowle was the most prolific printer of Quaker works in late seventeenth-century England. Three of his daughters went on to become Quaker printers too, in both London and Pennsylvania. Sowle served his apprenticeship to the widow Ruth Raworth 1646-1653. Although Sowle’s name does not appear in any imprints until 1680, he was printing for the Society of Friends from at least 1672. Sowle faced imprisonment and persecution as both a Quaker and an illicit printer. Undeterred, he printed over eighty works for the Society of Friends, including the writings of George Fox, Robert Barclay, George Whitehead, Isaac Pennington, and William Penn. He died at home in Shoreditch in 1695, leaving his printing business to his wife and daughter Tace.
Although Thompson’s personal faith has never been confirmed, he is remembered as a major printer and publisher of Catholic texts in the seventeenth century. Born in Ireland in the 1640s, Thompson was apprenticed to Dublin bookseller, and former lord mayor, William Bladen. By 1668, he had moved to London and was freed of the Stationers’ Company in 1669. Between 1672 and 1678, Thompson partnered with fellow printer Thomas Ratcliffe, whose daughter, Mary Daniel he married (widow of Thomas Daniel). Together, Thompson and Ratcliffe engaged in the printing of dissenting religious works, which practice Thompson continued after leaving Ratcliffe for new premises in Fetter Lane. Mary Thompson, a professed Catholic, was notedly active in these aspects of the business too. Thompson’s career was marked by a string of conflicts, imprisonments and examinations for printing Catholic devotional texts and tracts. In 1680, he was even arrested for treason, though the charges were later dropped. Leading Tory publisher, With his newssheet, the True Domestick Intelligence, he became known as the leading Tory publisher of the age. The Thompsons experienced a reversal of fortunes following the accession of James II and though Thompson died in 1687, first his widow, and then his stepdaughter and her husband, Mary and David Edwards, continued the printing business.