William Creech

William Creech FRSE (12 May 1745 – 14 January 1815) was a Scottish publisher, printer, bookseller and politician. For 40 years Creech was the chief publisher in Edinburgh. He published the first Edinburgh edition of Robert Burns' poems, and Sir John Sinclair's influential "Statistical Accounts of Scotland". In publishing Creech often went under the pseudonym of Theophrastus.

William was the son of Rev William Creech, a minister in Newbattle, Midlothian and his wife, Mary Buley. His father died when he was four months old and William spent time with his mother in both Perth and Dalkeith. He was educated at Dalkeith Grammar School then studied Medicine at Edinburgh University.

For two years (1766 to 1768) he travelled with William Strahan and Thomas Cadell to London and the continent, both France and Holland. After some time back in Edinburgh he went on a Grand Tour with Lord Kilmaurs in 1770, visiting France, Germany, Switzerland and Holland.

His mother struck up a friendship with Alexander Kincaid and thereafter he trained as an apprentice printer in the firm of Kincaid & Bell. In 1771 he went into partnership with his former master (and erstwhile stepfether), Alexander Kincaid. Kincaid was a publisher (and later Lord Provost of Edinburgh) who had purchased Allan Ramsay's bookshop in the Luckenbooths next to St. Giles Cathedral. In 1773 Kincaid gave Creech the bookshop to concentrate on the printing side of his work. The building soon thereafter became known as "Creech's Land", Creech staying here for 44 years. Burn's poems were published from this building.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1784 (in the first intake of members following its foundation in 1783). His proposers were Andrew Dalzel, James Gregory and Alexander Fraser Tytler. In 1786 he was a founder member of the Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce.

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