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John Nichols

Islington, 1745 - 1826, Islington

BiographyLC name authority rec. n 80032806.
Biography: ONB
"...John Nichols (1745–1826), printer and writer. Nichols was born on 2 February 1745 in Islington, Middlesex, the eldest of six children of Edward Nichols (1719–1779), baker, and his wife, Anne (1719–1783), daughter of Thomas Wilmot of Beckingham, Lincolnshire. Only John and his sister Anne survived to maturity. He was educated at John Shield's Academy for Young Gentlemen in Islington (c.1749–1757). He was originally destined for a naval career but his uncle, Thomas Wilmot, an officer under the command of Admiral Barrington, who was to have preferred him, died in 1751, and so on leaving school Nichols joined the Bowyer printing office, founded in 1699, and was bound apprentice at Stationers' Hall, on 6 February 1759. His master, William Bowyer the younger, who had been educated at Cambridge and had, ‘for more than half a century, stood unrivalled as a learned printer’ (Nichols, Lit. anecdotes, 3.269), set about furthering his new apprentice's education by setting him Latin exercises, accompanying him to scientific lectures, and introducing him to the authors whose works were passing through his press. Nichols had a retentive memory and was eager to learn; from his youth he was quick at everything: ‘he read with rapidity ... he spoke quickly, and that whether in the reciprocity of conversation or ... in a set speech.’ He also wrote ‘with great rapidity; but this, he used jocularly to allow, ... did not tend to improve his hand’ (Chalmers). He was soon placed in a position of trust, and in 1765 his master sent him to Cambridge to test his business acumen by trying to negotiate the purchase of a share in the management of the university press. The negotiations fell through, but Bowyer was impressed with how the young man handled the business. When he came out of his time on 4 March 1766 (he was freed at Stationers' Hall) Bowyer returned half the apprenticeship fee to his father, an accepted practice where an apprentice satisfied the conditions. Bowyer's partnership with his relative James Emonson had ended acrimoniously in 1760 and his only surviving son, Thomas, had rejected his father and the business; so on 7 April 1766 Bowyer took Nichols into partnership, and in 1767 they moved from the cramped quarters in Whitefriars to larger premises in Red Lion Passage, Fleet Street. ....
Portraits of Nichols in later life depict a short, amiable man, inclined to stoutness. He possessed, however, immense energy and a powerful memory. In private life he was popular and convivial. Boswell once described him as ‘joyous to a pitch of bacchanalian vivacity’ (The Yale Edition of the Private Papers of James Boswell, vol. 4, 1986, 412). According to Hart he was the ‘archetype of the successful industrious apprentice’ (Minor Lives, xx) who became master of a flourishing printing house and was known and liked by most of the leading literary and antiquarian figures of the day. Walpole admired his modesty and intelligence and to Gibbon he was ‘the last, or one of the last of the learned printers in Europe’ (Edward Gibbon to John Nichols, 24 Feb 1792; Nichols, Lit. anecdotes, 8.557). His printing office became a focus: many correspondents who met there left manuscripts to be called for. As well as editing over 150 works by other men he contributed innumerable articles to the Gentleman's Magazine and wrote works containing more biographical information than all his contemporaries combined. Behind his works lay his belief that ‘every book should contain within itself its necessary explanation’ (Kuist, Works, 19), thus saving the reader the trouble of referring elsewhere. He died on 26 November 1826 at his home in Highbury Place, Islington, and was buried on 5 December in the churchyard of St Mary's, Islington. "
("Nichols family (per. c.1760–1939),” Julian Pooley in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, eee ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford: OUP, 2004); online ed., ed. Lawrence Goldman, May 2009, www.oxforddnb.com. accessed August 18, 2015).

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Last Updated8/7/24

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