Richard Meighen

Richard Meighen (died 1641) was a London publisher of the Jacobean and Caroline eras. He is noted for his publications of plays of English Renaissance drama; he published the second Ben Jonson folio of 1640/1, and was a member of the syndicate that issued the Second Folio of Shakespeare's collected plays in 1632.

Meighen came from a family with strong connections to Shrewsbury School; his father, John Meighen (son of a Richard Meighen who was a tanner in Shrewsbury), was named headmaster in 1583 and continued in the post for a remarkable 52 years, until his death in September 1635. Several members of the Meighen family (including at least two named Richard) attended the school as students. Meighen the publisher maintained a lifelong connection with the school, and published works relating to it.

Meighen was active as a publisher during the years 1615 to 1641; his shops, as his title pages specify, were "under St. Clement's Church" in the Strand, and "next to the Middle Temple, in Fleet Street." He started his career on a prestigious note, acting as William Stansby's sales agent when Stansby printed and published the first Jonson folio in 1616. Like many stationers of his era, Meighen concentrated on publishing and selling books, and commissioned printers to print the works he published. His first edition of William Slater's Palae-Albion: The History of Great Britain (1621), for example, was printed by Stansby — though Meighen also worked with most of the printers of his generation.

While he issued a wide range of works of various types — including an edition of John Stow's Annals in 1631 — Meighen's volumes of drama are his most significant works, judged in retrospect. Meighen appears to have been only a minor partner in the 1632 Shakespeare Second Folio (he'd obtained the rights to The Merry Wives of Windsor in 1630); but he was a prime mover of the 1640/1 Jonson volume, which collected most of the post-1616 plays, masques, and miscellaneous works of the poet/dramatist. In publishing this volume, Meighen collaborated with Philip Chetwinde, who would publish the Shakespeare Third Folio of 1663/4. William Stansby, the printer/publisher of the first Jonson folio, also printed the second.

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