Richard Tonson (1653 – ca. 1700)

TONSON (RICHARD), bookseller in London, Gray's Inn Gate, 1675–89 (?). Elder brother of Jacob Tonson I. Made his first entry in the Term Catalogues in Hil. 1675 with a duodecimo, The Courtiers Calling. [T.C. 1. 198.] In 1676 he published Otway's tragedy Don Carlos, and in the following year the same author's Titus and Berenice and Charles Davenant's Circe, a Tragedy. In 1678 in company with his brother Jacob he published Mrs. Behn's comedy Sir Patient Fancy. He also published several law-books. In 1683 a list of the brothers' joint publications is found in An Account of De Quesne's Expedition. He is last heard of in Easter 1689. [T.C. II. 263]. Jacob Tonson took over the shop between 1698 and 1700; possibly Richard had only left publishing to his brother and confined himself to retail bookselling.

[Richard Tonson, 1653–ca. 1700], was the … son of Jacob Tonson, chirurgeon and citizen of London, who died in 1668. ... By his father's will (P. C. C. Hene 147) he and his [younger] brother [Jacob], as well as three sisters, were each entitled to 100l., to be paid when they came of age (Malone, Life of Dryden, p. 522). … [In the book trades, Jacob followed] his brother Richard, who had commenced in 1676, and had published, among other things, Otway's 'Don Carlos.' Richard Tonson had a shop within Gray's Inn Gate; Jacob Tonson's shop was for many years at the Judge's Head in Chancery Lane, near Fleet Street. … In 1681 the brothers Richard and Jacob joined in publishing Dryden's 'Spanish Friar' … Before the end of the century [Jacob] Tonson had moved from the Judge's Head to a shop in Gray's Inn Gate, probably the one previously occupied by his brother Richard. It is not unlikely that Richard was dead, and that Jacob, who had no children, and seemingly never married, now took into partnership his nephew Jacob, whose son was afterwards to be his heir.

TONSON, the name of a family of London booksellers and publishers. Richard and Jacob Tonson (c. 1656–1736), sons of a London barber-surgeon, started in 1676 and 1677 independently as booksellers and publishers in London. In 1679 Jacob, the better known of the two, bought and published Dryden’s Troilus and Cressida, and from that time was closely associated with Dryden, and published most of his works. He published the Miscellany Poems (1684–1708) under Dryden’s editorship, the collection being known indifferently as Dryden’s or Tonson’s Miscellany, and also Dryden’s translation of Virgil (1697). Serious disagreements over the price paid, however, arose between poet and publisher, and in his Faction Displayed (1705) Dryden described Tonson as having “two left legs, and Judas-coloured hair.” Subsequently the relations between the two men improved. The brothers jointly published Dryden’s Spanish Friar (1683). Jacob Tonson also published Congreve’s Double Dealer, Sir John Vanbrugh’s The Faithful Friend and The Confederacy, and the pastorals of Pope, thus justifying Wycherly’s description of him as “gentleman usher to the Muses.” He bought also the valuable rights of Paradise Lost, half in 1683 and half in 1690. This was his first profitable venture in poetry. In 1712 he became joint publisher with Samuel Buckley of the Spectator, and in the following year published Addison’s Cato. He was the original secretary and a prominent member of the Kit-Cat Club. About 1720 he gave up business and retired to Herefordshire, where he died on the 2nd of April 1736. His business was carried on by his nephew, Jacob Tonson, jun. (d. 1735), and subsequently by his grand-nephew, also Jacob (d. 1767).