John Morphew (d. 1720)
John Morphew, bookseller, publisher, map and chart seller; in Stationers Court near Ludgate Street, 1707; near Stationers' Hall, 1709–1720.
John Morphew, son of Stephen, bound to Edward Jones 2 Dec. 1695 (Apprentices' register), admitted to freedom 1 Feb. 1702/3 (Freeman's register), clothed 2 Oct. 1710 (Court book, 1697–1717, f. 184a).
Michael Treadwell includes Morphew as one of "a small group of specialists who, for a fee, would put their names to and handle the sale and distribution of printed works 'tho the property [was) in another person'" from the 1670s to about the middle of the eighteenth century.
Throughout this period there were never fewer than two nor more than five of these specialist trade publishers, the two best-known and longest-surviving businesses being those 'near Stationers' Hall' which was operated successively from 1680 to the 1720s by Randal Taylor (1680–94), his son-in-law John Whitlock (1694–96), Whitlock's widow Elizabeth (1696–98), John Nutt (1698–1706), John Morphew (1706–20), Morphew's widow Elizabeth (1720–22) and Thomas Payne (1722–26), and that 'near the Oxford Arms in Warwick Lane' which was operated successively from the time of the Glorious Revolution until the 1740s by Richard Baldwin (1688-98), his widow Abigail (1698–1713), and the Baldwins' son-in-law James Roberts (1713–1740s). The 1680s also saw the shorter-lived shops of Langley Curtis, of Walter Davis, and of Richard Janeway, while the next burst of activity in the early 18th century gave rise to those of Sarah Malthus, of Benjamin Bragg and his niece Sarah Popping, of Ferdinando Burleigh and his widow Rebecca, and of John Baker, whose business split on his death between his widow Shirley and her successors William Boreham and John Peele on the one hand, and Thomas Warner and his much better-known successors Thomas and Mary Cooper on the other.
... the presence of any one of them in an imprint in the form 'Printed for [for example] S. Popping at the Black Raven in Paternoster Row' is an almost certain guarantee that that imprint is what I have called a misleading one and that the work on which it appears was actually published (in our modern sense) by someone else—someone the identity of whom in the absence of surviving manuscript evidence, it will be extremely difficult to discover. There are, of course, exceptions to this rule for ... trade publishers did occasionally own copyrights and publish on their own account. And there are also a large number of trade publisher imprints, perhaps a quarter in all, though the proportion varies widely from one to another and over time, which are not misleading at all, being in the correct form 'Sold by [for example] Ferdinando Burleigh in Amen Corner, where the name of the actual publisher is not misrepresented, but merely omitted. This does not, however, alter the fact that, in the absence of specific evidence to the contrary, it is always safest to assume that any work bearing the imprint of a known trade publisher was published for someone else.
—Michael Treadwell, “On False and Misleading Imprints in the London Book Trade, 1660–1750,” in Fakes and Frauds: Varieties of Deception in Print and Manuscript, ed. Robin Myers and Michael Harris (Oak KnollPress, 1989, rpt. 2006), 33–34
A Dictionary of the Printers and Booksellers who were at Work in England, Scotland and Ireland from 1668 to 1725, by Henry Plomer (1922)
MORPHEW (JOHN), bookseller in London, near Stationers' Hall, 1706–20 (?). Publisher of political pamphlets, State trials, news-sheets and novels, and one of the principal booksellers of the period. Morphew made his first entry in the Term Catalogues in Mich. 1706, with a shilling book on the war. [T.C. III. 522.] He appears to have set up in the premises previously occupied by John Nutt. On October 12th of that year he issued the first number of The Country-Gentletnan's Courant. He issued the first number as an advertisement without charge. [Nichols, Lit. Anecd. IV. 82.] Early in 1707 he issued Mercurius Oxoniensis, or, The Oxford Intelligencer, by M. G., and in the same year The Monthly Miscellany. Apart from novels and ephemeral tracts he published much interesting literature. In the Journal to Stella, December 13th, 1711, Dean Swift wrote, "I forgot to tell you that the printer told me yesterday that Morphew the publisher was sent for by that Lord Chief Justice [the Earl of Macclesfield], who was a manager against Sacheverell, he showed him two or three papers and pamphlets, among the rest mine of the Conduct of the Allies, threatened him, asked him who was the author, and has bound him over to appear next term." Morphew was still publishing in 1720, when he issued a second volume of novels by Mrs. Manley. [Esdaile, p. 266.]
Notes & Queries "London Booksellers Series" (1931–2)
MORPHEW, JOHN. A well-known publisher and bookseller during the early part of the eighteenth century, with his premises situate near Stationers' Hall. He seems to have specialised in the publication of periodicals, famous amongst those -which he issued being the Observator, the Examiner and the Tatler. He was certainly well established by 1706, for on Oct. 5, of that year he published the first number of the Country Gentleman's Courant, in 1720.
—Frederick T. Wood, 19 September 1931