Humphrey Robinson

Humphrey Robinson (died 13 November 1670) was a prominent London publisher and bookseller of the middle seventeenth century.

Robinson was the son of a Bernard Robinson, a clerk from Carlisle; other members of his family were important clergymen and church office-holders. Humphrey Robinson became a "freeman" (a full member) of the Stationers Company on June 30, 1623. He was active as an independent bookseller in the years 1624–70. Based in his shop at the sign of the Three Pigeons in St. Paul's Churchyard, he was "one of the largest and most important booksellers of this period."

Robinson is most noted for publishing two collections of plays in English Renaissance drama; he partnered in these works with colleague Humphrey Moseley. The most important of these collections was the first Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1647; they also issued a significant collection of James Shirley's dramas titled Six New Plays in 1653. The two Humphreys also published a volume of the Duke of Newcastle's plays, and Sir William Davenant's Love and Honour, both in 1649. (After Moseley's death in 1661, Robinson worked with widow Anne Moseley when she continued her late husband's business; conjointly they published the 1661 edition of the Beaumont and Fletcher play Beggars' Bush.)

Operating without Moseley, Robinson published John Milton's masque Comus (1637), and Peter Hausted's scandalous play The Rival Friends (1645). Beyond the confines of the drama, Robinson published a range of works of various types, from the miscellaneous works of Sir Francis Bacon (1629) to Robert Norton's The Gunner (1664). Robinson may also have been involved in the private news service business that was a significant enterprise in his era; when newspapers were still in their infancy, many people relied on manuscript subscription news services for information. [See: Nathaniel Butter; John Pory.]

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