University of Virginia Library

Dr. Johnson's Printer: The Life of William Strahan (Cambridge, Mass., 1964); first published in London by Routledge and Kegan Paul.

For detailed tables and full discussion of evidence and methods of tabulating evidence, see my dissertation: "William Strahan, Printer: His Career and Business Procedures" (University of Chicago: Dept. of English, 1965).

TLS, October 5, 1956, p. 592.

Being a Short Account of the Strahans and Spottiswoodes, 2nd ed. (1912).

The American Philosophical Society collection is B: St. 75; This is abbreviated in the table to APSL.

Ellic Howe, ed., The London Compositor: Documents Relating to Wages, Working Conditions and Customs of the London Printing Trade, 1785-1800 (1947), Introduction and chap. 1, pp. 10-83.

Strahan also had two "public" businesses: the law house and the King's house. No reference will be made to the public businesses except in one instance to verify evidence of the kind of type stored. Statements on the following pages are based on 2,341 items of data from 711 representative samples of printing entries in Ledgers A, B, D and F.

The highest consistently re-ordered job work which Strahan recorded was for the Stationers' Company. He frequently ran "forty reams," 20,000 copies, of "the Non Pareil Psalms"; he ran even longer orders of the "Cambridge Almanac": up to 50,000 copies.

Bowyer was in business in 1727, twelve years before Strahan; a fragment of his ledgers is reproduced and discussed in P.T.P.'s "Woodfall's Ledger," Notes and Queries, First Ser., XI (1855) and in Herbert Davis's "Bowyer's Paper Stock Ledger," Library, 5th Ser., VI (1951).

Strahan knew the three men cited. He took business away from Bowyer in the 1740's (notably the Methodist accounts); Richardson helped Strahan by giving him parts of large jobs, and Strahan remained a grateful friend; Collins was in partnership with Strahan in several, perhaps many, publishing ventures.