Richard Hawkins (publisher)

Richard Hawkins (died 1633) was a London publisher of the Jacobean and Caroline eras. He was a member of the syndicate that published the Second Folio collection of Shakespeare's plays in 1632. His bookshop was in Chancery Lane, near Sergeant's Inn.

Hawkins served his apprenticeship under the stationer Edmond Matts in 1604–11; in turn he acquired Matts's business in 1613 and established himself as an independent publisher. In his first year, Hawkins reprinted John Marston's The Metamorphosis of Pigmalion's Image, a work originally issued by Matts in 1598. Hawkins's initial entry into the Stationers' Register was Elizabeth Tanfield Cary's The Tragedy of Mariam, which he also printed in 1613 — a work now recognized as the first tragedy by a woman to be published in English.

Hawkins's connection with the Shakespeare canon started in 1628; an entry in the Stationers' Register, dated 1 March that year, records the transfer of the rights to Othello from Thomas Walkley, the publisher of the play's first quarto (1622), to Hawkins. (The same transfer included the rights to the Beaumont and Fletcher plays Philaster and A King and No King.) Hawkins then published the second quarto of Othello (printed by Augustine Matthews) in 1630. Hawkins's text combined elements from the two previous texts, the 1622 first quarto and the First Folio of 1623, which showed significant differences. Hawkins's possession of the copyright to one Shakespearean play enabled him to become one of the subsidiary members of Robert Allot's syndicate (the others were William Aspley, Richard Meighen, and John Smethwick) when Allot published the Second Folio.

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