A Dictionary of the Booksellers and Printers who Were at Work in England, Scotland and Ireland from 1641 to 1667/Preface
PREFACE.
THE object of this work is to bring together the information available respecting the men and women who printed and sold books during the twenty-seven years from 1641 to 1667. It is an attempt to fill the gap between the Stationers' Registers and the Term Catalogues so ably edited by Mr. Edward Arber. The information consists of imprints showing the various places in which such booksellers and printers carried on their business, such biographical details as could be gleaned from various printed and manuscript sources, and an indication of the character of the trade carried on by each bookseller. As a farther help to the bibliographer, I have included a notice of all publishers' lists that I have met with. It was my original intention to have given an indication of the work of each printing house, but I soon found that this was impossible. Such printing houses as those of the Fletchers, Roycroft, or Warren are in themselves a study, and any attempt to generalize was worse than useless.
The chief sources of information have been: (1) The Thomason Tracts; (2) the Bagford and Ames Collections of Title-pages; (3) Hazlitt's Collections and Notes through the medium of Mr. G. J. Gray's invaluable Index; (4) the Registers and Apprenticeship Books of the Company of Stationers; (5) the State Papers and other documents at the Public Record Office; (6) the Reports of the Historical Manuscripts Commission; (7) Wills in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury at Somerset House.
I have made no attempt to distinguish between booksellers and publishers. There is no evidence to show that any of the men mentioned in this dictionary, with the single exception of John Ogilby—who has been included for the excellence of his work—were publishers in the sense in which we understand the term now. Every publisher is a bookseller in so far that he sells the books he publishes, but some publishers, Longmans and Methuen for example, are not booksellers in the sense of selling all kinds of books. On the other hand, Hatchards, of Piccadilly, and others that could be named, are not only retail booksellers in a large way of business, but they are also publishers. Such I conceive Herringman and Moseley are to be considered. Others again, such as Cornelius Bee and Samuel Thompson, visited the chief marts abroad, and bought largely on commission, and though they held shares in all the most important literary ventures of their day, and their names appear in the imprints, they are to be considered rather as retail booksellers than publishers.
I have not inserted any initials in this book. In the first place it must be remembered that during this period, when the censorship of the press was severe, printers and booksellers often contented themselves with placing their initials in the imprints, and almost every name that figures in this volume might have been duplicated amongst the initials, thus swelling the volume to an inordinate size, without any corresponding advantage to the student. Identification of such initials as, say, "T. B.," which may apply to half a dozen different men, must be largely guesswork, unless based on a special study of the work in which they occur.
There are no doubt many shortcomings in this book. Names may have been omitted that ought to be here, and the information is in many cases meagre. But I trust the reader will accept it as "spade" work in a field which has hitherto been almost totally neglected, and as a foundation upon which in time to come another builder will erect a more lasting edifice.
In conclusion, my thanks are tendered to a host of friends for kindly help: to Mr. A. W. Pollard for bringing the work under the notice of the Bibliographical Society, and to the Council of the Society for undertaking its publication; to Mr. G. K. Fortescue, Keeper of the Printed Books in the British Museum, for permission to see the proofs of the catalogue of the Thomason Tracts; to Mr. F. C. Rivington for allowing me access to the Registers of the Stationers' Company; to Mr. G. J. Gray, of Cambridge, Mr. F. Madan, of Oxford, Mr. Robert Steele and Mr. R. A. Peddie, for many notes and suggestions; and lastly, to Mr. E. R. McC. Dix, of Dublin, for much valuable information respecting the booksellers and printers of Ireland. For those of Scotland, I am wholly indebted to Mr. H. G. Aldis's notes, published in his List of Books printed in Scotland, issued by the Edinburgh Bibliographical Society in 1905.
44, CROWNHILL ROAD,