Cuthbert Burby

Cuthbert Burby (died 1607) was a London bookseller and publisher of the Elizabethan and early Jacobean eras. He is remembered for publishing a series of significant volumes of English Renaissance drama, including works by William Shakespeare, Robert Greene, John Lyly, and Thomas Nashe.

Burby ("sometimes confused with Cuthbert Burbage," though there is no known connection between the two men) was the son of Edmund Burby, a farmer in Erlsey, Bedfordshire. Cuthbert Burby was apprenticed to the stationer William Wright for eight years as of Christmas 1584, and became a "freeman" (full member) of the Stationers Company on 13 January 1592. He did business in London between 1592 and 1607. As his title pages attest, his shops were located 1) "under Saint Mildred's Church in the Poultry," 2) "at the Royal Exchange," and 3) "in Paul's Churchyard at the sign of the Swan." He had "a large, flourishing, respectable business...."

Early in his career as a publisher, Burby issued works in the famous controversy between Thomas Nashe and Gabriel Harvey. Curiously, Burby published works in their exchange by both Nashe and Harvey; his connection, it appears, was not personal or ideological — just business. He also published Nashe's The Unfortunate Traveller (1594) and Lenten Stuff (1599).

Regarding Shakespeare: Burby published two key editions of Shakespearean works, the first quarto of Love's Labor's Lost (1598; printed by William White) and the second quarto of Romeo and Juliet (1599; printed by Thomas Creede). The title page of the R&J Q2 states that that edition was "Newly corrected, augmented, and amended" — which has been interpreted to indicate that Q2 was issued as a deliberate correction and replacement for the defective Q1, the "bad quarto" printed by John Danter in 1597. The title page of Burby's Q1 of LLL, the earliest play text to be printed under Shakespeare's name, also claims that that edition was "Newly corrected and augmented" — which has been taken by some commentators as a possible indication of an earlier "bad quarto" of LLL that has not survived.

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