The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume XI. The Period of the French Revolution.
§ 14. Leading Publishers in Commonwealth and Restoration times
It was during the civil war, when the art of letters was almost submerged by the rush of political and polemical tracts with which the country was then flooded, that the craft of printing fell to its lowest estate, and the calling of publisher seemed, for the time being, to retain but little connection with literature. The chief name that stands out from this dead level is that of Humphrey Moseley, of the Prince’s Arms, in St. Paul’s churchyard, who devoted himself to the production of poetry and belles lettres. His publications include the first collected edition of Milton’s poems (1645), and works by Crashaw, D’Avenant, Shirley, Herrick, Suckling and others. There was also Andrew Crooke, Hobbes’s publisher, who, in 1642, issued two surreptitious editions of Religio Medici, and was entrusted with the publication of the authorised edition in the following year; and it was from Richard Marriot’s shop in St. Dunstan’s churchyard that The Compleat Angler was sent forth in 1653, whence was issued, also, the first part of Hudibras, ten years later. In the restoration period, Henry Herringman, Dryden’s first publisher, comes to the front as a publisher of polite literature and may be considered successor to Moseley in this department of letters. He acquired a wide connection with literary and scientific men of the day, and his shop, frequently mentioned by Pepys, became the chief literary lounging place in town. In this, the transition period of publishing, Herringman forms a link between the old and the new order, and was one of the earliest booksellers to give up the selling of miscellaneous books and to devote himself entirely to the business of his own publications.