Jacob Tonson

Jacob Tonson
Portrait of Jacob Tonson by Godfrey Kneller, 1717
Born	12 November 1655
Died	17 March 1735/6
Nationality	English
Occupation	Bookseller and publisher
Parent(s)	Jacob Tonson

Jacob Tonson, sometimes referred to as Jacob Tonson the elder (1655–1736) 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 (1682–1735) was his business partner. The business was continued by the younger Tonson's son Jacob Tonson (1714–1767).

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. Tonson was the second son of Jacob Tonson, chirurgeon and citizen of London, who died in 1668. 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.