page_title: Jacob Tonson
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Jacob Tonson / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Third Volume of a 1727 edition of Plutarch's Lives printed by Jacob Tonson.
context_page_description: Jacob Tonson, sometimes referred to as Jacob Tonson the Elder, was an eighteenth-century English bookseller and publisher.
  Tonson published editions of John Dryden and John Milton, and is best known for having obtained a copyright on the plays of William Shakespeare by buying up the rights of the heirs of the publisher of the Fourth Folio after the Statute of Anne went into effect. He was also the founder of the famous Kit-Cat Club. His nephew, Jacob Tonson the Younger, was his business partner. The business was continued by the younger Tonson's son, Jacob Tonson.
context_section_description: Scholars have not always been sure of Tonson's birthdate, and it has in the past been listed as occurring in 1655 or 1656. But the register of christenings in the parish of St Andrew Holborn demonstrates that Tonson was born on 12 November 1655 and baptized 18 November 1655. The register lists Tonson as the "sonne of Jacob Tonson Shoemaker and of Elizabeth his wife neare Grayes Inn Lane." He is believed to have been related to Major Richard Tonson, who obtained a grant of land in county Cork from Charles II, and whose descendants became Barons Riversdale. His father's will left him and his elder brother Richard, as well as three sisters, each £100, to be paid when they came of age. On 5 June 1670 Jacob was apprenticed to Thomas Basset, a stationer, for eight years. Having been admitted a freeman of the Company of Stationers on 20 December 1677, he began business on his own account, following his brother Richard, who had commenced in 1676, and had published, among other things, Thomas Otway's Don Carlos. Richard Tonson had a shop within Gray's Inn Gate; Jacob Tonson's shop was for many years at the Judge's Head in Chancery Lane, near Fleet Street.
  It has been said that when Tonson bought the copy of Troilus and Cressida (1679), the first play of John Dryden's that he published, he was obliged to borrow the purchase money (£20) from Abel Swalle, another bookseller. The names of both booksellers appear on the title-page, as was often the case at that time. Tonson was sufficiently well off to purchase plays by Otway and Nahum Tate. In 1681 the brothers Richard and Jacob joined in publishing Dryden's Spanish Friar, and in 1683 Jacob obtained a valuable property by purchasing from Barbazon Ailmer, the assignee of Samuel Simmons, one half of his right in Paradise Lost. The other half was purchased at an advance in 1690. Tonson afterwards said he had made more by Paradise Lost than by any other poem.
  In the earlier part of his life Tonson was much associated with Dryden. A step which did much to establish his position was the publication in 1684 of a volume of Miscellany Poems, under Dryden's editorship. Other volumes followed in 1685, 1693, 1694, 1703, and 1708, and the collection, which was several times reprinted, is known as both as Dryden's Miscellany and Tonson's Miscellany. During the ensuing year Tonson continued to bring out pieces by Dryden, and on 6 October 1691 paid thirty guineas for all the author's rights in the printing of the tragedy of Cleomenes. Joseph Addison's Poem to his Majesty was published by Tonson in 1695, and there was some correspondence respecting a proposed joint translation of Herodotus by Boyle, Richard Blackmore, Addison, and others.
  Dryden's translation of Virgil, executed between 1693 and 1696, was published by Tonson in July 1697 by subscription. Serious financial differences arose between the poet and his publisher, and Dryden's letters to Tonson (1695–1697) are full of complaints of meanness and sharp practice and of refusals to accept clipped or bad money. Tonson would pay nothing for notes; Dryden retorted, "The notes and prefaces shall be short, because you shall get the more by saving paper." He added that all the trade were sharpers, Tonson not more than others. Dryden described Tonson thus, in lines written under his portrait, and afterwards printed in Faction Displayed (1705):
  With leering looks, bull-faced, and freckled fair;
  With two left legs, and Judas-coloured hair,
  And frowzy pores, that taint the ambient air.
  Subsequently the letters became more friendly, and on the publication of Alexander's Feast, in late 1697, Dryden wrote to Tonson, "I hope it has done you service, and will do more."
  Dryden's collection of translations from Boccaccio, Chaucer, and others, known as The Fables, was published by Tonson in November 1699; a second edition did not appear until 1713. There is an undated letter from Mrs. Aphra Behn to Tonson at Bayfordbury, thanking him warmly for what he had said on her behalf to Dryden. She begged hard for five pounds more than Tonson offered for some of her ver
caption: The title page of a 1727 English translation of Plutarch's Parallel Lives, published by Tonson
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