William Stansby

William Stansby (1572–1638) was a London printer and publisher of the Jacobean and Caroline eras, working under his own name from 1610. One of the most prolific printers of his time, Stansby is best remembered for publishing the landmark first folio collection of the works of Ben Jonson in 1616.

As for many individuals of his time, Stansby's date of birth is unrecorded — though the event likely occurred shortly before his baptism on 8 July 1572. He was one of fourteen children of Richard Stansby, a cutler from Exeter. At Christmas 1589/90 William Stansby was apprenticed to the London stationer John Windet; Stansby completed his apprenticeship and became a freeman of the Stationers Company, the guild of London printers and booksellers, on 7 January 1597. Stansby remained with Windet, first as a journeyman and then in 1609 as partner in his house at the sign of the Cross Keys, until Windet's death in 1610. Windet left a half-share of his business (well equipped with three printing presses) to Stansby, setting him up as an independent craftsman. (The other half of the business passed to Windet's two daughters, from whom Stansby purchased it.)

At the time, the Stationers Company included booksellers and printers as largely separate classes: publishing was generally done by the booksellers, who hired the printers to produce their books, broadsheets and other printed matter. Some printers did some publishing as a secondary aspect of their primary business. Stansby followed the general pattern: the majority of his books were printed for booksellers to sell in their shops, while the remainder were works that Stansby published independently.

As a printer Stansby worked for many of the booksellers of his era; he also worked repeatedly for several stationers over the years. For John Smethwick, Stansby printed several editions of the collected Poems of Michael Drayton (1609–30), plus several of the later editions of prose works by Robert Greene, like Menaphon (1616, 1631) and Never Too Late (1621). Stansby printed collections of the sermons of Barten Holyday for Nathaniel Butter. (He also printed Holyday's only play, Technogamia, for John Parker.)

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