Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Harris, John (1756-1846)
HARRIS, JOHN (1756–1846), publisher, was born in 1756. At a very early age he was apprenticed to Evans the bookseller, and witnessed in 1773 the affray between Goldsmith and his employer in respect of a libel in the ‘London Packet,’ of which the latter was the publisher. After being with Evans for about fourteen years, he settled as a bookseller at Bury St. Edmunds. Returning shortly afterwards to London, he was successively assistant to Mr. John Murray and Mr. F. Newbery, the publisher, of St. Paul's Churchyard, whose imprint the ‘Gentleman's Magazine’ then bore. On the death of Newbery, in 1780, Harris undertook the management of the business for his widow. On her retirement therefrom he succeeded to it, and in the course of several years amassed an ample fortune. Before his death, which took place at Walworth on 2 Nov. 1846, he took his son into partnership, and the business was afterwards styled Harris & Son. As a publisher he displayed much of the ingenuity and energy of his predecessor, John Newbery, who founded the business in 1740, and during his career he produced many valuable works for young people of an educational nature, as well as others of a lighter kind, employing such authors as Mrs. Trimmer, Mrs. Lovechild, Mrs. Hofland, Isaac and Jeffreys Taylor, and the Abbé Gaultier. He also fully maintained the character of the house as the recognised source of the supply of books for the nursery.
[Nichols's Lit. Anecd. viii. 519; Gent. Mag. 1846, ii. 664, and original sources.]