John W. Parker and Son

active London, 1843 - 1860

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LC Heading: John W. Parker and Son
Biography:
Parker, John William (1792–1870), publisher and printer, was the son of John Parker, an army officer. He began working for the London printer William Clowes in childhood and was formally apprenticed to him at fourteen. On completing that apprenticeship in 1813 he remained with Clowes as an accountant. About 1818 he married; the couple were to have two sons and two daughters. Both sons were to join him in the printing business. When the duke of Northumberland complained that Clowes's newfangled steam-driven press was a nuisance and bought him out, Clowes moved from Northumberland Court, the Strand, to Duke Street, London, taking over premises and equipment formerly belonging to Augustus Applegarth, the improver of Friedrich Koenig's steam press.

Placed in charge of the new operation, Parker developed a reputation for sound management that soon reached Cambridge University Press, which had fallen behind its counterpart at Oxford. In 1828 Parker was sent by Clowes to Cambridge, where, as de facto superintendent of the press, he thoroughly modernized all aspects of its operation. In 1832 Parker left Clowes to found a publishing firm in his own name, John W. Parker, at 445 Strand, London. Besides retaining his Cambridge assignment, which included the publication of classical, mathematical, and theological textbooks, Parker was immediately appointed as an official publisher of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK). Under SPCK auspices Parker inaugurated in July 1832 the penny per copy Saturday Magazine, intended to counter disreputable journals directed at the poorer classes.

On 15 November 1836 Parker was elected official printer to the University of Cambridge, following the retirement of John Smith. He held the post until 1854 at an annual salary of £400. His most famous book in this capacity was William Whewell's Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences (1847). Many of the titles he printed for Cambridge included cheap (because done on steam-powered presses) editions of the Bible, the Book of Common Prayer, and other religious works. The Bible Society at Cambridge originally objected to such inexpensive editions, but the quality and popularity of Parker's eventually changed their minds. At William IV's request, Parker also designed and published the red-ruled ‘King's Bible’, which was a great success.

In 1843 Parker's son John William Parker (1820–1860), educated at King's College, Cambridge, joined his father's firm—which became John W. Parker & Sons—as general manager. Within a few years his mother and his brother Frederick were dead. On 12 February 1848 at Holy Trinity Church, Islington, London, his father married Ellen Maria Mantell (b. 1818), daughter of the well-known geological writer Gideon Algernon Mantell (1790–1852); they were to have a son and two daughters. The firm's name was changed again, to John W. Parker & Son. Its authors included Charles Kingsley (Yeast and Hypatia), Richard Chenevix Trench, Sir Arthur Helps, F. D. Maurice, and John Stuart Mill (On Liberty and Utilitarianism). Under the management of the younger Parker, John W. Parker & Son became a bastion within the London publishing establishment of liberal Christianity, and eventually of Christian socialism. One major expression of the new stance was a significantly realigned Fraser's Magazine for Town and Country, under the editorship of Parker junior, begun in July 1847. Its most effective authors included Henry Thomas Buckle, Carlyle, Kingsley, Lewes, Mill, Maurice, Ruskin, and Tennyson.

On 6 May 1848 John W. Parker & Son published the first issue of Politics for the People, a monthly journal of sixteen pages intended for lower- and middle-class readers. Its appearance marked the beginning of the Christian socialist movement. The journal's position was that the exploitation of the lower classes by supposedly Christian capitalists was fundamentally contradictory. It ceased publication in June, lacking subscriber support.

Parker's concern for the availability of books to lower-income households made him one of the leading figures in the free-trade controversy of 1852. In May of that year he solicited, compiled, edited, and published The Opinions of Certain Authors on the Publishing Question, composed of one hundred eminent authors' views as to whether or not the ‘underselling’ of books below the established retail price was desirable. They responded overwhelmingly in the affirmative and restrictions on printing were eliminated later in the year.

John W. Parker & Son published none of the major Victorian novels except those of Kingsley. The firm's most notorious non-fiction book, Essays and Reviews (1860), developed from its Oxford and Cambridge Essays, published annually from 1855 to 1859. Essays and Reviews had no named editor. In it seven contributors, all but one of them clergy, argued that traditional Christianity must accept the so-called higher criticism of the Bible and the implications of modern natural science, particularly those of geology. The controversy surrounding its publication was intense. A letter condemning the book was signed by every Anglican bishop in Great Britain, and two of the contributors were suspended from their clerical duties until reinstated by the privy council.

In the midst of this turmoil the younger John W. Parker died on 9 November 1860. His father had just taken a long-time employee, William Butler Bourn, into partnership, but Parker, Son, and Bourn lasted only three years, being sold to Longmans in 1863 for £20,000. Following the sale of his firm, Parker entered into partnership with Thomas Richard Harrison as printers in St Martin's Lane. Their arrangement continued until Parker's death from bronchitis at his home, Warren Corner House, near Farnham, Surrey, on 18 May 1870. He was buried in Highgate cemetery, Middlesex. At once high-minded and practical, Parker was of major consequence as a social and religious reformer.

Dennis R. Dean
Sources D. R. Dean, ‘John W. Parker’, British literary publishing houses, 1820–1880, ed. P. J. Anderson and J. Rose, DLitB, 106 (1991), 233–6 · H. Curwen, A history of booksellers, the old and the new (1873), 317–24 · J. J. Barnes, Free trade in books: a study of the London book trade since 1800 (1964) · S. C. Roberts, A history of the Cambridge University Press (1921) · S. C. Roberts, The evolution of Cambridge publishing (1956) · The Bookseller (1 June 1870), 491–2 · I. Ellis, Seven against Christ: a study of ‘Essays and reviews’ (1980) · m. cert. · d. cert.
Archives U. St Andr. L., corresp. with James David Forbes · UCL, letters to Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge
Likenesses lithograph (after daguerreotype), BM, NPG
Wealth at death under £40,000: probate, 11 June 1870, CGPLA Eng. & Wales
(“Parker, John William (1792–1870),” Dennis R. Dean in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, eee online ed., ed. Lawrence Goldman, Oxford: OUP, 2004, accessed September 2015. www. oxforddnb.com)

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Last Updated8/7/24

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