Richard Jones

Artist Info

Richard Jonesactive London, 1564 - 1602

LC name authority rec. nr93006519

LC heading: Jones, Richard, active 1564-1602

Biography:

Jones, Richard (fl. 1564–1613), bookseller and printer, was admitted as a ‘brother’ of the Stationers' Company on 7 August 1564. Nothing is known of his parents, date of birth, or birthplace. His being admitted as a ‘brother’ rather than a ‘freeman’ suggests that he was an alien or a foreigner, and there is some evidence to suggest that Jones may have originally come from Wales. Jones's only known child, Thomas, became a freeman in the Stationers' Company by patrimony on 16 August 1596.

Jones operated out of a variety of locations in his five decades as a stationer. His initial London career seems to have been divided between a bookshop in St Paul's Churchyard and a printing house on Fleet Lane. From 1576 to 1580 Jones's imprints exclusively advertise a printing house outside Newgate near St Sepulchre's Church as the location of his business. By 1580 Jones had moved his printing shop for the last time to a location near St Andrew's Church in Holborn. There is some evidence to suggest that after 1586 Jones entered into a partnership with the bookseller William Hill. While a relatively obedient member of the Stationers' Company, Jones did get into serious trouble on three occasions: on 3 August 1579 he received a large fine for printing without a licence and was ordered to bring all copies to Stationers' Hall; on 21 January 1583 Jones was heavily fined and committed to prison for allowing an unlicensed ballad to be printed in his shop; and on 5 September 1597 Jones was fined and committed to the ward for ‘printinge a booke disorderly’, all copies of which were ordered destroyed (Arber, Regs. Stationers, 2.827).

Ballads were a staple of Jones's business and, appropriately enough, both his first and last entries in the Stationers' register were for ballads. He was a prolific producer of poetry collections as well, involved with at least ten collections of poetry as either printer, publisher, or both. He had more than a passing interest in aristocratic culture: for a span of approximately ten years he published seven books on the history and practice of chivalry. He seems to have been a publisher with literary aspirations. Not only did he produce a relatively large amount of prefatory material, penning a range of matter (poems, dedications, and addresses) for sixteen of his extant publications, but there is also evidence to suggest that he was the compiler of A Handefull of Pleasant Delites (1565–6), A Gorgious Gallery of Gallant Inventions (1577), Brittons Bowre of Delights (1591), The Booke of Honor and Armes (1590), and The Arbor of Amorous Devices (1594). Along with publishing many works by Isabella Whitney, Nicholas Breton, Sir John Smythe, George Whetstone, and Francis Sabie, Jones was also the first publisher of Richard Edward's Damon and Pithias (1571), Philip Stubbes's The Anatomie of Abuses (1583), and Thomas Nashe's Pierce Penilesse (1592). Jones is perhaps best-known, however, for his publication of the first edition of Christopher Marlowe's Tamburlaine (1590), in which he wrote in a preface that he ‘(purposely) omitted and left out some fond and frivolous Jestures, digressing (and in my poore opinion) far unmeet for the matter’ (sig. A2r). Towards the end of his career Jones often decorated title-pages with a printer's device containing his initials and depicting a gillyflower flanked by a rose and another flower. Encircling these flowers is the Welsh motto ‘Heb Ddieu heb ddim’ (‘Without God without anything’). His involvement with the printing and publication of new works slowed in 1595, and in 1598 he seems to have sold his printing shop to William White.

Jones seems to have continued sporadically publishing new works for over a decade until 1611. He received poor relief from the company from 1608 until early 1613. Nothing is known of either the place or the date of his death.

Kirk Melnikoff

Sources Arber, Regs. Stationers · C. Marlowe, Tamburlaine the great (1590) · C. Blagden, The Stationers' Company: a history, 1403–1959 (1960) · P. H. Jones, ‘Wales and the Stationers' Company’, The Stationers' Company and the book trade, 1550–1990, ed. R. Myers and M. Harris, St Paul's Bibliographies (1997), 185–202 · W. C. Ferguson, ‘The Stationers' Company poor books, 1608–1700’, The Library, 5th ser., 31 (1976), 37–51 · STC, 1475–1640

Kirk Melnikoff, ‘Jones, Richard (fl. 1564–1613)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://proxy.bostonathenaeum.org:2055/view/article/15070, accessed 5 Nov 2015]