W. Bulmer and Company, Shakespeare Press
Bulmer, William (bap. 1757, d. 1830), printer, was baptized in Newcastle upon Tyne on 13 November 1757, the seventh child of Thomas Bulmer (bap. 1716) and Esther Hodgson (1716–1798). He was apprenticed to Isaac Thompson, Quaker printer of Burnt House Entry, St Nicholas's Churchyard, Newcastle. While apprenticed he took proofs of early wood-engravings of Thomas Bewick, with whom he maintained a lifelong connection. Bulmer was admitted freeman of Newcastle by patrimony at the guild on 19 January 1778, but seems to have left the city by then, since he was not sworn until 13 September 1780. He is supposed to have worked in London for John Bell, then publishing his miniature editions, and may have spent time in Paris to improve his typographical skills.
By 1787 Bulmer was working for George Nicol, the king's bookseller, who was then starting work on the great edition of Shakespeare's plays, illustrated with engravings, that he had proposed in 1786 to John and Josiah Boydell. Nicol had also employed William Martin, brother of Robert Martin, Baskerville's foreman and successor, to cut a splendid transitional typeface for Bulmer's exclusive use until 1805, when it was used by the Liverpool printer John M'Creery for the first edition of his poem The Press. Bulmer established his Shakspeare [sic] Press in London at Cleveland Row, St James's, early in 1790, paying his first poor rate at Lady day, 1790. The folio Shakespeare was published in parts from 1791 to 1804. It was followed by the folio Milton (3 vols., 1794–7), and by perhaps his best work, the Boydells' History of the River Thames (2 vols., 1794–6), with coloured aquatints. All three used Martin's typeface very effectively.
By 1790 William Bulmer was a member of the Honourable Band of Gentleman Pensioners, which waited on the king; his elder brother Fenwick Bulmer, a druggist in the Strand and later knighted, probably helped him to purchase his commission. In December 1791, with the support of Sir Joseph Banks, president of the Royal Society, Bulmer was appointed printer to the society, printing the Philosophical Transactions from 1792 until his retirement in 1821. George Nicol seems to have been his ‘sleeping’ partner from the earliest years of the Shakspeare Press, and Bulmer's successor was George's son, William Nicol. Bulmer produced, as a venture at his own expense, the Poems of Goldsmith and Parnell (1795), with wood-engravings by Thomas and John Bewick, which caused some acrimony with the elder brother. His fine work was soon recognized, and he gained commissions from several leading London publishers, including William Miller and his successor John Murray II, the Boydells, George Nicol, Longmans, and Cadell and Davies. As well as the Royal Society work he also printed for the East India Company, the British Museum, the Board of Agriculture, the Royal Institution, and the Horticultural Society of London.
Although noted for his fine printing, Bulmer also produced ‘jobbing’ work such as the cheap pamphlets for the Society for Bettering the Condition and Improving the Comforts of the Poor, and a long run of auction catalogues for R. H. Evans, starting with the famous Roxburghe sale of May 1812. As an outcome of this sale the Roxburghe Club was established, and Bulmer printed sixteen books for the club between 1816 and 1820. He also earned the support of several prominent authors, including Shute Barrington, bishop of Durham, Frederick Howard, earl of Carlisle, Sir Richard Colt Hoare, T. J. Mathias, and T. F. Dibdin. In his Bibliographical Decameron (3 vols., 1817), printed by Bulmer, Dibdin writes of the Shakspeare Press that ‘it has effectually contributed to the promotion of belles-lettres, and national improvement “in the matter of the puncheon and matrix”’ (Dibdin, 396). Working as he did outside the City of London, Bulmer never became a member of the Stationers' Company, but was very active in the committee of London master printers negotiating with compositors and pressmen on piece-work rates over the years 1805–11, chairing the committee, of which Thomas Bensley was secretary, on several occasions. Bulmer retired to Clapham Rise, London, where he entertained Thomas Bewick in August 1828, and where he died on 9 September 1830, being survived by his wife Elizabeth. He was buried on 16 September in St Clement Danes in the Strand.
Peter Isaac
Sources P. Isaac, William Bulmer: the fine printer in context, 1757–1830 (1993) · R. Welford, Men of mark 'twixt Tyne and Tweed, 1 (1895), 431–6 · T. F. Dibdin, The bibliographical decameron, 2 (1817), 382–96 · J. Dreyfus and P. Isaac, ‘William Bulmer's will’, in J. Dreyfus and P. Isaac, Studies in the book trade in honour of Graham Pollard (1975), 341–9 · H. V. Marrot, William Bulmer, Thomas Bensley: a study in transition (1930) · [J. B. Nichols], GM, 1st ser., 100/2 (1830), 305–10 · [R. Pollard], ‘Biographical sketch of three Newcastle apprentices’, Newcastle Magazine, 9/10 (Oct 1830), 464–6 · IGI
Likenesses J. Ramsay, lithograph, pubd 1827, NPG · J. Ramsay, lithograph, pubd 1827 (after his portrait), NPG · P. Audinet, line print (after J. Ramsay), BM; repro. in Nichols, GM · engraving, repro. in Dibdin, Bibliographical decameron, 395 · engraving, repro. in Nichols, GM, facing p. 305
Wealth at death considerable wealth; money and property: will, TNA: PRO, PROB 11/1775
Peter Isaac, ‘Bulmer, William (bap. 1757, d. 1830)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/3928, accessed 20 June 2014]
