William Ponsonby (publisher)
William Ponsonby (1546? โ 1604) was a prominent London publisher of the Elizabethan era. Active in the 1577–1603 period, Ponsonby published the works of Edmund Spenser, Sir Philip Sidney, and other members of the Sidney circle;[1] he has been called "the leading literary publisher of Elizabethan times."[2]
Ponsonby completed his apprenticeship under stationer William Norton on 11 January 1571. Around 1576 he established his own bookshop at the sign of the Bishop's Head in St. Paul's Churchyard.[3]
Ponsonby's relationship with the works of Spenser began when he issued the
In regard to Sidney, Ponsonby issued both the 1590 and
Ponsonby nourished a reputation as an elite publisher, and so avoided what the Elizabethans considered lower-prestige product โ like stage plays. Ponsonby printed none of the plays of
In an age when the disciplines of publishing and printing were largely (though not entirely) separate, Ponsonby concentrated on publishing and commissioned professional printers to print his texts. The 1590 Faerie Queene volume, for example, was printed by John Wolfe, while Ponsonby's 1595 edition of Spenser's Amoretti and Epithalamion was printed by Peter Short. The 1583 Mamilia was printed by Thomas Creede.
On Ponsonby's death in 1604, many of his copyrights passed to his brother-in-law, stationer Simon Waterson.[4]
See also
- Robert Allot
- William Aspley
- Cuthbert Burby
- Walter Burre
- Philip Chetwinde
- Francis Constable
- Thomas Cotes
- Crooke and Cooke
- Richard Field
- Richard Hawkins
- Henry Herringman
- William Jaggard
- William Leake
- John and Richard Marriot
- John Martyn
- Richard Meighen
- Humphrey Moseley
- Humphrey Robinson
- John Smethwick
- Thomas Thorpe
- Thomas Walkley
References
- ^ Michael Brennan, "William Ponsonby: Elizabethan Stationer," Analytical and Enumerative Bibliography Vol. 7 No. 3 (1983), p. 91.
- ^ Harry Gidney Aldis, The Printed Book, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1951; p. 38.
- ^ Michael G. Brennan, and Noel J. Kinnamon, A Sidney Chronology 1554–1654, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003; pp. 28-9.
- ^ Adolphus William Ward and Alfred Rayney Waller, eds. The Cambridge History of English Literature. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1910; Vol. IV, p. 454.