PEOPLE KNOWN FOR: printing
British artist and author
William Morris was an 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 was a 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...
English composer
William Byrd was an 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...
English printer, translator, and publisher
William Caxton was 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...
Italian printer
Aldus Manutius was 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...
British composer
Thomas Morley was a 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 was a 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...
Scottish publisher and scientist
William Smellie was a 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...
French scholar and printer
Henri II Estienne was a 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 was an 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,...
Italian printer
Giovanni Mardersteig was a 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,...
English printer
Sir Emery Walker was an 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...
Scottish printer
Robert Foulis was a 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...
French scholar and printer
Étienne Dolet was a 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...
American printer, publisher, and postmaster
Mary Katherine Goddard was an 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 was a 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 was a scholar-printer, the 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...
French printer
Christophe Plantin was a 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...
American author
Theodore L. De Vinne was an 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...
English publisher
John Walter, I was the 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...
English printer and lawyer
William Rastell was an 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 was a 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...
American journalist
Isaiah Thomas was a 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...
American printer and typographer
Frederic W. Goudy was an 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...
American journalist and publisher
Benjamin Henry Day was an 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 was an 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...
Italian printer
Paulus Manutius was a Renaissance printer, the 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...
English printer
John Baskerville was an 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 was an 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...
English dramatist
Henry Chettle was an 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...
British printer
John Ogilby was a 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 was an 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...
American journalist
Bartholomew Green was a 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...
Swiss printer
Johann Froben was 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 was a 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...
Dutch typographer
S.H. de Roos was a 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...
German printer
Johann Fust was an 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....
Italian printer
Aldus Manutius the Younger was the 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,...
French music printer
Pierre Attaingnant was a 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...
French printer
Simon de Colines was a 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,...
British journalist
Joseph Moses Levy was an 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 was a 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...
British book designer
Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson was an 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,...
American printer [1663–1752]
William Bradford was a 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...
French printer
Nicolas Jenson was a 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...
German printer
Peter Schöffer was a 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 was a 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...
Italian music printer
Ottaviano dei Petrucci was an 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...
English printer
Richard Pynson was a 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...
English printer
Wynkyn de Worde was an 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...