John Marshall (publisher)
John Marshall (fl. 1770 — 1828) was an 18th-century London publisher who specialized in children's literature and chapbooks. He published some of the most important children's literature of the time,[1] including works by Dorothy and Mary Ann Kilner and Ellenor Fenn.[2] Marshall was the preeminent children's book publisher in England from about 1780 until 1800.[3]
History of business
Not much is known about Marshall and those details we do have are uncertain. He began his business around 1770 and was located first at No. 4 Aldermary Churchyard, where he helped his father, Richard Marshall, continue the successful chapbook business that he had run with Cluer Dicey.[4] Marshall moved to 17 Queen Street, Cheapside, in 1787 and finally to 140 Fleet Street in 1806, where he remained until 1828. At some point after 1806, an E. Marshall joined the business. Between 1780 and 1790 his catalogue listed over 100 children's books.[5] He also attempted to start a children's magazine three different times during his career.[6]
Children's literature
After the death of John Newbery, the first publisher to make a profit publishing children’s literature, many firms began to enter the business, but none ever had the monopoly Newbery did.[7] Marshall was one of the most successful and he published “the most original books”, popularizing fictional biography for juvenile readers.[8] One of the best and most recognized of such works published by Marshall was Dorothy Kilner’s The Life and Perambulation of a Mouse (1783), praised by Sarah Trimmer and Mary Wollstonecraft alike.[9] In general, Marshall published books that were more serious than Newbery’s, emphasizing the “instruction” part of “to instruct and delight”, the imperative of eighteenth-century children’s literature. His catalogue included this announcement:
Ladies, Gentlemen, and the Heads of Schools, are requested to observe, that the beforementioned Publications are original,, and not compiled: as also, that they were written to suit the various Ages for which they are offered; but on a more liberal Plan, and in a different Style from the Generality of Works designed for young People: being entirely divested of that prejudicial Nonsense (to young Minds) the Tales of Hobgoblins, Witches, Fairies, Love, Gallantry, etc. with which such little Performances heretofore abounded.[10]
However, although Marshall advocated more disciplined stories, he also published Newbery-inspired stories that “stressed amusement” and would sell well, including fairy tales.[11] By the mid-1780s, he was focusing almost exclusively on moral works that had a strong Christian element. As Samuel Pickering, Jr., a scholar of 18th-century children’s literature, explains, “he was a shrewd publisher and, reading the market well, he saw that instruction would sell. While keeping a selection of old-fashioned, amusing books in print….he established a reputation as a printer of moral works.”[12] Mary Jackson describes his strategy in sharper terms, saying he engaged in "apparent duplicity and sharp tricks", claiming that he was a reforming publisher but issuing tales that had little moral redemption in the eyes of Trimmer, Fenn, Kilner, and others.[13] In 1795, he became a printer for Hannah More’s Cheap Repository Tracts.[14]
Marshall learned from Anna Laetitia Barbauld’s innovative children’s literature and began to use large fonts and margins; he also began to publish graduated readers like her Lessons for Children. Ellenor Fenn wrote a series for him which began with Cobwebs to Catch Flies.[15] He also recognized the value of illustrations in children’s books. Beginning in the mid-1780s, he and Sarah Trimmer published several sets of illustrated stories about the Bible and ancient history.[16]
Marshall was driven by profit and he may have paid his writers poorly. Trimmer's Description of a Set of Prints of Scripture History and Description of a Set of Prints of Ancient History, among others, made a lot of money for Marshall, but she did not see much of the profits. She complained that he treated her like "a mere bookseller's fag".[17] More described him as "selfish, tricking and disobliging from first to last" and resented his desire to make as much money as possible from the Cheap Repository Tracts. When More took her publishing business elsewhere, Marshall responded by issuing his own series of tracts in competition.[18]
Like Newbery, Marshall’s authors advertised his books within their texts. For example, in Anecdotes of a Boarding School, a mother gives her daughter Marshall’s Dialogues and Letters and Adventures of a Pincushion as she is going off to school. In Jemima Placid, the heroine reads books that could "be bought at Mr. Marshall’s" and her father determines to buy many for his friends.[19]
Notes
- ^ Darton, 137-38.
- ^ Darton, 161-64.
- ^ Darton, 164.
- ^ Darton identifies Richard as John's father, although this is uncertain. Darton, 68; Jackson, 122.
- ^ Darton, 137-38; 161; Jackson, 122.
- ^ Darton, 266.
- ^ Pickering, 91.
- ^ Pickering, 91.
- ^ Pickering, 92.
- ^ Qtd. in Darnton, 161.
- ^ Pickering, 177.
- ^ Pickering, 180.
- ^ Jackson, 124-126.
- ^ Pickering, 180.
- ^ Pickering, 188, 192.
- ^ Pickering, 188.
- ^ Jackson, 122.
- ^ Jackson, 124.
- ^ Pickering, 229.
References
- Darton, F. J. Harvey. Children’s Books in England. 3rd ed. Rev. Brian Alderson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.
- Jackson, Mary V. Engines of Instruction, Mischief, and Magic: Children’s Literature in England from Its Beginnings to 1839. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989.
- Pickering, Samuel F., Jr. John Locke and Children’s Books in Eighteenth-Century England. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1981.