Publications of the book-sellers

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 the book-sellers

  • A letter to the Irish Parliament, on the intended bill for legalizing military law. Dublin: printed and sold by the book-sellers, 1799. ESTC No. N19124. Grub Street ID 8551.

Sold by the book-sellers

  • Tyler, John. A sermon preach'd before the Lords ... in the Abbey-church at Westminster, on the 30th day of January, 1706/7; ... By John Tyler, Lord Bishop of Llandaff. London]: Printed and sold by the book-sellers of London, and Westminster, [1707. ESTC No. N23178. Grub Street ID 12536.

Printed for the book-sellers

  • Defoe, Daniel. The life, and strange surprizing adventures of Robeson Cruso, mariner: Who lived eight and twenty years alone in an un-inhabited island on the coast of America, near the mouth of the Great River Oroonoque. Who having been cast on shore by shipwreck, wherein all the ship's crue perished but himself. With an account how he was at last taken up and preserv'd by pyrates. Written by himself and deliver'd to a friend. London: Printed for the book-sellers of London and Westminster, 1719. ESTC No. T72270. Grub Street ID 295808.