Publications of appointment of

Note: The following printer, bookseller, or publisher lists are works in progress. They are generated from title page imprints and may reproduce false and misleading attributions or contain errors.

What does "printed by" mean? How to read the roles ascribed to people in the imprints.

In terms of the book trades, the lists below are sorted into up to four groups where: the person is designated in the imprint as having a single role:

  1. "printed by x"; or
  2. "sold by x"; or
  3. "printed for x" or "published by x";

or as having the seller and printer roles in combination, or an absence of the printer's name following "London: printed:" or "London: printed,":

  1. "printed and sold by x"; or "printed for and sold by x"; or "printed by and for x"; or "printed: and sold by x"; or "printed, and sold by x";  and so on.

On this last point, trade publishers may seem to have "printed" or "published" the work, though they did not own the copyright. The lists below reflect only the information on the imprint, except where ESTC provides extra information.

See also "The Meaning of the Imprint."

Printed by appointment of

  • Penn, William. A letter from William Penn proprietary and governour of Pennsylvania in America, to the Committee of the Free Society of Traders of that province, residing in London. Containing a general description of the said province, its soil, air, water, seasons and produce, both natural and artifical, and the good encrease thereof. Of the natives or aborigines, their language, customs and manners, diet, houses or wigwams, liberality, easie way of living, physick, burial, religion, sacrifices and cantico, festivals, government, and their order in council upon treaties for land, &c. their justice upon evil doers. Of the first planters, the Dutch &c. and the present condition and settlement of the said province, and courts of justice, &c. As also an account of the city of Philadelphia newly laid out. Its scituation between two navigable rivers, Delaware and Skulkill, with a portraiture or plat-form thereof, wherein the purchasers lots are distinguished by certain numbers inserted. And the prosperous a. London]: Printed by appointment of the said committee, by Andrew Sowle, at the Crooked-Billet in Holloway-Lane in Shoreditch, 1683. ESTC No. R40046. Grub Street ID 121893.