John Morphew (d. 1720)

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.]

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