PEOPLE KNOWN FOR: printing
British artist and author
William Morris, English designer, craftsman, poet, and early socialist, whose designs for furniture, fabrics, stained glass, wallpaper, and other decorative arts generated the Arts and Crafts movement...
German printer
Johannes Gutenberg, German craftsman and inventor who originated a method of printing from movable type. Elements of his invention are thought to have included a metal alloy that could melt readily and...
English composer
William Byrd, English organist and composer of the Shakespearean age who is best known for his development of the English madrigal. He also wrote virginal and organ music that elevated the English keyboard...
English printer, translator, and publisher
William Caxton, the first English printer, who, as a translator and publisher, exerted an important influence on English literature. In 1438 he was apprenticed to Robert Large, a rich mercer, who in the...
Italian printer
Aldus Manutius, the leading figure of his time in printing, publishing, and typography, founder of a veritable dynasty of great printer-publishers, and organizer of the famous Aldine Press. Manutius produced...
British composer
Thomas Morley, composer, organist, and theorist, and the first of the great English madrigalists. Morley held a number of church musical appointments, first as master of the children at Norwich Cathedral...
British publisher
Robert Maxwell, Czechoslovak-born British publisher who built an international communications empire. His financial risks led him into grand fraud and an apparent suicide. Virtually all of the young Hoch’s...
Scottish publisher and scientist
William Smellie, Scottish compiler of the first edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (1768–71) and a distinguished natural historian. The son of a master builder and stonemason, Smellie left his grammar...
French scholar and printer
Henri II Estienne, scholar-printer, grandson of Henri Estienne, founder of the family printing firm in Paris, and son of Robert I Estienne, who left Paris to establish a printing firm in Geneva. Educated...
Italian printer
Giambattista Bodoni, Italian printer who designed several modern typefaces, one of which bears his name and is in common use today. The son of a printer, Bodoni left home as a boy to go to Rome, where...
Italian printer
Giovanni Mardersteig, printer and typographer who, as head of Officina Bodoni, created books exemplifying the highest standards in the art of printing. He studied law at the universities of Bonn, Vienna,...
English printer
Sir Emery Walker, engraver and printer associated with the revival of fine printing in England in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Walker’s formal schooling ended when he was 13. From 1873 to 1883...
Scottish printer
Robert Foulis, Scottish printer whose work had considerable influence on the bookmakers of his time. Foulis was the son of a brewer and qualified as a master barber. While working at that trade, he attended...
French scholar and printer
Étienne Dolet, French humanist, scholar, and printer whose Commentarii linguae Latinae contributed notably to Latin scholarship. He is often described as “the first martyr of the Renaissance.” After studying...
American printer, publisher, and postmaster
Mary Katherine Goddard, early American printer and publisher who was also probably the first woman postmaster in America. Goddard grew up in New London, Connecticut. In 1762 she and her widowed mother...
American printer
John Peter Zenger, New York printer and journalist whose famous acquittal in a libel suit (1735) established the first important victory for freedom of the press in the English colonies of North America....
French scholar and printer
Robert I Estienne, scholar-printer, second son of Henri Estienne, who founded the family printing firm about 1502 in Paris. Robert became head of the firm in 1526, and it was he who adopted the device...
French printer
Christophe Plantin, French printer, founder of an important printing house and publisher of the Antwerp Polyglot Bible. Plantin learned bookbinding and bookselling at Caen, Normandy, and settled in 1549...
American author
Theodore L. De Vinne, American author of many scholarly books on the history of typography. De Vinne entered the employ of Francis Hart, one of the leading printers in New York City, in 1849 and became...
English publisher
John Walter, I, English founder of The Times, London, and of a family that owned the newspaper for almost 125 years. Considered neither an outstanding nor an honest journalist, Walter nevertheless turned...
English printer and lawyer
William Rastell, English printer, lawyer, and man of letters. He edited and published the works of his uncle, Thomas More. He also printed the only surviving plays of John Heywood, who married Rastell’s...
German lithographer
Alois Senefelder, German inventor of lithography. The son of an actor at the Theatre Royal in Prague, Senefelder was unable to continue his studies at the University of Ingolstadt after his father’s death...
American journalist
Isaiah Thomas, radical anti-British printer and journalist who published the Massachusetts Spy from 1770 to 1801. (The paper continued publication until 1904.) At an early age Thomas was apprenticed to...
American printer and typographer
Frederic W. Goudy, American printer and typographer who designed more than 100 typefaces outstanding for their strength and beauty. Goudy taught himself printing and typography while working as a bookkeeper....
American journalist and publisher
Benjamin Henry Day, American printer and journalist who founded the New York Sun, the first of the “penny” newspapers in the United States. Starting in 1824 as a printer’s apprentice of the Springfield...
English designer
Sir Francis Meynell, English book designer particularly associated with the fine editions of Nonesuch Press, publications that were notable for the use of modern mechanical means to achieve results that...
Italian printer
Paulus Manutius, Renaissance printer, third son of the founder of the Aldine Press, Aldus Manutius the Elder. In 1533 Paulus assumed control of the Aldine Press from his uncles, the Asolani, who had managed...
English printer
John Baskerville, English printer and creator of a typeface of great distinction bearing his name, whose works are among the finest examples of the art of printing. Baskerville became a writing master...
British engraver and printer
George Baxter, English engraver and printer who invented a process (patented 1835) of colour printing that made reproductions of paintings available on a mass scale. He was the son of John Baxter (1781–1858),...
English dramatist
Henry Chettle, English dramatist, one among many of the versatile, popular writers of the Elizabethan Age. Chettle began his career as a printer and associated with such literary men as Robert Greene and...
British printer
John Ogilby, British printer who was a pioneer in the making of road atlases; as a poet and translator he is chiefly remembered for being ridiculed by Dryden in MacFlecknoe and by Pope in the Dunciad....
American printer and publisher
Daniel Berkeley Updike, American printer and scholar, founder in 1893 of the distinguished Merrymount Press in Boston. Between 1880 and 1893 Updike worked for the publisher Houghton Mifflin and from 1892...
American journalist
Bartholomew Green, British American printer and journalist who published the Boston News-Letter, America’s first successful newspaper, from 1704 to 1707 and again from 1711 to 1732. Refusing to take sides...
Swiss printer
Johann Froben, the most famous of the Basel scholar-printers, whose professional innovations revolutionized printing in Basel and whose publications included many outstanding works of scholarship. Froben’s...
Dutch printer and inventor
Laurens Janszoon Coster, Dutch rival of Johannes Gutenberg as the alleged inventor of printing. Little is known of this early printer, whose last name means “sacristan,” his title as an official of the...
Dutch typographer
S.H. de Roos, book and type designer who was an important figure in the private-press movement in the Netherlands. De Roos studied lithography at the Royal Academy of Art, Amsterdam. Among his early activities...
German printer
Johann Fust, early German printer, financial backer of Johann Gutenberg (the inventor of printing in Europe), and founder, with Peter Schoeffer, of the first commercially successful printing firm. Fust,...
Italian printer
Aldus Manutius the Younger, last member of the Italian family of Manuzio to be active in the famous Aldine Press established by his grandfather Aldus Manutius the Elder. When only 14 years old, Aldus the...
French music printer
Pierre Attaingnant, prominent French music printer and publisher in the Renaissance who was one of the earliest to use single-impression printing. (Earlier printers printed the staff and the notes in separate...
French printer
Simon de Colines, French printer who pioneered the use of italic types in France. He worked as a partner of Henri Estienne, the founder of an important printing house in Paris. Estienne died in 1520, and...
British journalist
Joseph Moses Levy, English newspaperman, founder of the London newspaper Daily Telegraph. Levy was educated at Bruce Castle school and in Germany. He acquired a printing shop on Fleet Street in London...
English publisher
Edward Blount, publisher and translator who, with Isaac and William Jaggard, printed the First Folio of William Shakespeare’s plays (1623). After serving as an apprentice to London publisher William Ponsonby,...
British book designer
Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson, English book designer and binder who contributed much to the success of the Arts and Crafts Movement. Though initially a barrister, he turned in 1883 to bookbinding, a field...
American printer [1663–1752]
William Bradford, printer who issued one of the first American almanacs, Kalendarium Pennsilvaniense or America’s Messenger (1685), the first American Book of Common Prayer (1710), and many political writings...
French printer
Nicolas Jenson, publisher and printer who developed the roman-style typeface. Apprenticed as a cutter of dies for coinage, Jenson later became master of the royal mint at Tours. In 1458 he went to Mainz...
German printer
Peter Schöffer, German printer who assisted Johannes Gutenberg and later opened his own printing shop. Schöffer studied in Paris, where he supported himself as a copyist, and then became an apprentice...
English music publisher
Thomas East, prominent English music publisher whose collection of psalms (1592) was among the first part-music printed in score rather than as individual parts in separate books. East was licensed as...
Italian music printer
Ottaviano dei Petrucci, Italian music printer whose collection of chansons, Harmonice Musices Odhecaton A (1501), was the first polyphonic music printed from movable type. Petrucci went to Venice in 1490,...
English printer
Richard Pynson, printer in London, a native of Normandy who introduced roman type into English printing (1509). His chief rival in London was Wynkyn de Worde. About 1490 Pynson took over the business of...
English printer
Wynkyn de Worde, Alsatian-born printer in London, an astute businessman who published a large number of books (at least 600 titles from 1501). He was also the first printer in England to use italic type...