John Hatchard

John Hatchard (1769–1849) was an English publisher and bookseller, in Piccadilly, London. The Hatchards bookshop there is still in business.

Hatchard had a trial at the works of the printer Thomas Bensley. He then served on apprenticeship, with John Ginger of College Street, Westminster. He later became an assistant to Thomas Payne of Mews Gate, and went into business on his own account at 173 Piccadilly, London. Starting there in 1797, he had the largest business in the retail book trade in London after four years.

In 1801 Hatchard moved from 173 Piccadilly to No. 189–190; in 1820 that number was changed to 187. The original shop at 173 was demolished in 1810, replaced by the Egyptian Hall.

The publication of a pamphlet Reform or Ruin: Take your Choice (1797), by John Bowdler in 1797 was the start of a long publishing career. Hatchard's views were conservative and evangelical, and he became the main publisher for works associated with the Clapham Sect.Rivington's, London publishers with a hold on Church of England-related trade, had set their face against the rise of Methodist and evangelical views; Hatchard gained both in terms of publishing work, and also with his shop becoming a social centre. William Connor Sydney wrote:

William Wilberforce, Samuel Rogers, Clayton Mordaunt Cracherode, Sir Walter Scott, Sir John Hawkins, Porson, Steevens, Lord Spencer, Malone, Windham, Hannah More, George Crabbe, were among those who frequented Hatchard's back parlour. Sydney Smith writing in the Edinburgh Review in 1810, described Hatchard's visitors as "a set of well-dressed, prosperous gentlemen, assembling daily at the shop well in with the people in power, delighted with every existing institution and with every existing circumstance."

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