Page:Plomer Dictionary of the Booksellers and Printers 1907.djvu/24

xviii turned out by Bernard Alsop, Andrew Coe, and Thomas Brudenell. , the head-master of Merchant Taylors' School, set up a press about this time, which will be noticed later on, and William Bentley's press at Finsbury turned out some well printed Bibles in miniature founts.

A marked improvement took place in the book-trade after 1650. The fury of partisan passions had spent itself. The Civil War was practically at an end, and men began to return to their old pursuits and their books. In 1652 the first announcement of the proposed Polyglot Bible was issued. The first volume appeared in September, 1654, the second in 1655, the third in 1656, and the last three in 1657. The printer was Thomas Roycroft of Bartholomew Close, and the type was supplied by the four recognized type founders, the double pica and italic used in the Dedication being that cut by John Day in the sixteenth century. The editor was Brian Walton, Bishop of Chester, and the work received every encouragement from Oliver Cromwell. This undertaking raised Roycroft's printing house to a leading position amongst the London printing houses, and 's splendid reprints of the classical authors also came from this press. In 1653, Izaak Walton gave to the world his Complete Angler. In 1655 appeared the first volume of Sir William Dugdale's Monasticon Anglicanum, and in the same year printed a folio edition of Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia. But perhaps the best evidence of the revival of the book-trade is found in the two lists of books published by with Brome's Five New Plays, in 1653, and Sir Aston Cokain's Dianea in 1654. The first of these contains one hundred and thirty five items, and the second, one hundred and eighty. Another important publisher of this time was. On the 7th March,, the whole of his copyrights were transferred by his widow and Alexander Brome, whom she had married, to Humphrey Moseley, Richard Thrale, Joshua Kirton, and Samuel Thompson. They fill upwards of four pages of the Stationers' Register, and, in addition to such classics as Tacitus, Aristotle, and Plutarch, included Bacon's Essays, Thos. Jones'