John Chapman (publisher)

John Chapman (16 June 1821 – 25 November 1894) was a publisher who had medical training and was based at 142 Strand, London.

He was born on 16 June 1821. He was son of a chemist at Nottingham. He was apprenticed to a watchmaker at Worksop, but, not staying long with him, went to his brother, a medical student at Edinburgh, who sent him out to Adelaide to start in business as a watchmaker and optician. Returning to Europe about 1844, he began studying medicine in Paris, and continued his studies at St. George's Hospital, London. After submitting a book on human nature to Green, a publisher and bookseller in Newgate Street, he was led to take over Green's business, which he transferred to 142 Strand.

In 1846, he published the first English translation of David Strauss' Life of Jesus, translated by Mary Ann Evans, later better known by her pen name of George Eliot. Seven years later he published her translation of Feuerbach's The Essence of Christianity.

He acquired the philosophical radical journal the Westminster Review in 1851, and provided a platform for emerging ideas of evolution. His assistant Mary Anne Evans brought together authors including Francis William Newman, W. R. Greg, Harriet Martineau and the young journalist Herbert Spencer, and later John Stuart Mill, William Carpenter, Robert Chambers, George Holyoake and Thomas Huxley.

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