Benjamin Motte

Artist Info

Benjamin Motteactive London, 1690s

LC name authority n85311600

LC Heading: Motte, Benjamin, -1738

Biography:

Motte, Benjamin (1693–1738), bookseller and printer, was born in November 1693 in St Botolph, Aldersgate, London, the eldest son of Benjamin Motte (d. 1710), printer, and his wife, Anne Clarke (1670/71–1737); he was baptized in the parish on 14 November. The family name presumably indicates a French ancestry. Benjamin Motte was the son of a glover from St Albans and was apprenticed to the London printer Eleanor Cotes on 8 July 1668; he was freed on 2 August 1675. He found work as an overseer to the Aldersgate printing house of Mary Clarke, the widow of the printer Andrew Clarke. His business relationship with the Clarke firm was cemented on 5 April 1692, with his marriage to Mary's 21-year-old daughter, Anne, in Westminster Abbey, with whom he had at least three children: Benjamin, Andrew Motte, and Charles. The family were living in St Botolph, Aldersgate parish, from at least 1693. He apparently began printing under his own name in 1687, but really began printing in earnest only in the 1690s. He was the official printer to the Parish Clerks' Company from 1694 until 1709, printing bills of mortality and The Parish-Clerk's Guide. He was also contracted to print many official church documents.

Benjamin (I) Motte's printing house was relatively large and prosperous, and he printed a variety of works, including Samuel Wesley's heroic epic poem The Life of Christ (1693), his elegies on Queen Mary and Archbishop Tillotson (1695), and several textbooks. He also produced, often in collaboration with the engraver John Sturt, a number of illustrated books, ranging from grand folios on architecture to more modest emblem books. He was known as the learned printer owing to his command of Latin, and he published a number of classical works; two translations—of Pufendorf and the Lord's prayer—have also been attributed to him. Motte died in December 1710 and was buried in St Botolph's on Christmas eve. His library was sold by auction in 1711. Anne carried on the printing business and even when Benjamin took over the family firm in 1715, she remained active in the trade until at least 1731. She was buried in St Botolph parish on 6 March 1737.

The younger Benjamin Motte was freed by patrimony on 7 February 1715, although his name first appears on an imprint in 1714. He printed only a few titles each year, but he began to function as bookseller from 1719. A long-standing professional connection with the Tooke family of booksellers (which began with Robert Tooke being apprenticed to the elder Motte in 1692) was consolidated when, on the death of Benjamin Tooke, Benjamin was offered a partnership in the Tooke firm in either late 1723 or early 1724; following the death of Samuel Tooke in December 1724, Motte became the only active partner in the firm. On 21 December 1725 he married Elizabeth Brian, the daughter of a minister, Thomas Brian (or Bryan), in the Charterhouse chapel, Finsbury, London; they had two children. The following year Motte became a partner with his brother Charles (bap. 1698, d. 1731). Between 1731 and 1734 Motte was active on his own, but from 1735 he was again in partnership, this time with his apprentice Charles Bathurst.

Motte's output was large and varied. Alongside many Anglican works, including numerous sermons, he published Restoration literature, instructional manuals, historical studies, scientific treatises, and, following his father's footsteps, classical editions. He also produced a two-volume abridgement of the Royal Society's Philosophical Transactions for 1700–20, in 1721. However, he is most famous for his association with Jonathan Swift, who chose Motte as his publisher following the death of Benjamin Tooke. In October 1726 Motte published the first edition of Gulliver's Travels, but his political timidity and caution led him to make a number of changes to the text without Swift's knowledge. An amended second edition restored some of Swift's original text, but it was only with the publication of a Dublin edition by George Faulkner in 1735 that Swift was able to see through the press a text with which he was satisfied.

Gulliver's Travels remained a lucrative work for Motte: it ‘hath made a bookseller almost rich enough to be an alderman’ (Correspondence of Jonathan Swift, 3.198). Despite Swift's misgivings about Motte's handling of the text, he remained loyal to the London bookseller for the rest of the latter's career. In 1732 Swift wrote to Motte promising that he would be the publisher for ‘any thing that shall be published with my consent while I am alive or after my death’ (ibid., 4.41). Accordingly, Motte published a number of further works by Swift, including the anonymous An Epistle to a Lady which led to Motte's arrest in 1734. Motte was also involved in an altercation with Faulkner over the publication of an Irish edition of Swift's works in 1735. However, despite Swift's advocacy, Motte attracted the disapprobation of Pope, following the careless printing of Miscellanies in Prose and Verse (1727–32), which included work by Swift, Pope, and others. Pope labelled the publisher ‘a common Bookseller’ (ibid., 4.65).

Motte died intestate on 12 March 1738, and his estate was administered by his brother-in-law, Thomas Brian. His stock and copyrights were auctioned at a trade sale on 9 December 1740, with a second sale being organized by his former apprentice Bathurst on 15 December 1743.

J. J. Caudle

Sources M. Treadwell, ‘Benjamin Motte, Jr’, The British literary book trade, 1700–1820, ed. J. K. Bracken and J. Silver, DLitB, 154 (1995), 198–202 · D. F. McKenzie, ed., Stationers' Company apprentices, 3 vols. (1961–78), vols. 2–3 · H. R. Plomer and others, A dictionary of the printers and booksellers who were at work in England, Scotland, and Ireland from 1668 to 1725 (1922) · T. Belanger, ‘Booksellers' sales of copyright: aspects of the London booktrade, 1718–1768’, PhD diss., Col. U., 1970 · M. Treadwell, ‘Benjamin Motte, Andrew Tooke, and Gulliver's Travels’, Proceedings of the first Münster symposium on Jonathan Swift, ed. H. J. Real and H. J. Vienken (1985), 287–344 · D. Cornu, ‘Swift, Motte, and the copyright struggle: two unnoticed documents’, Modern Language Notes, 54 (Jan 1939), 120–21 · H. Terrink and A. H. Scouten, eds., A bibliography of the writings of Jonathan Swift, 2nd edn (1963) · The correspondence of Jonathan Swift, ed. H. Williams, 5 vols. (1963–5) · private information (2004) [M. Treadwell, Trent University, Canada]

(J. J. Caudle, ‘Motte, Benjamin (1693–1738)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://proxy.bostonathenaeum.org:2055/view/article/19421, accessed 19 Oct 2015])