A Dictionary of the Booksellers and Printers who Were at Work in England, Scotland and Ireland from 1641 to 1667/Herringman (Henry)

by Henry Robert Plomer

HERRINGMAN (HENRY), bookseller in London; Blue Anchor in the Lower Walk of the New Exchange, 1653-93. Next to Humphrey Moseley, the most important bookseller in the period covered by this dictionary. He was the son of John Herringman, of Kessalton [i.e. Carshalton], in Surrey, yeoman, and was apprenticed to Abell Roper, bookseller of Fleet Street, for eight years from August 1st, 1644. [Register of Apprenticeships, Stationers' Hall.] His first book entry, which curiously enough follows one by his great contemporary Moseley, was Sir Kenelm Digby's Short Treatise of Adhearing to God, written by Albert the Great, entered on September 19th, 1653, and he followed this on October 12th in the same year with Lord Broghall's Parthenissa, a Romance. At the time of Moseley's death in 1661, Herringman possessed copyrights of books by Sir Kenelm Digby and James Howell, and many of Sir R. Davenant's pre-Restoration operas. He was Dryden's publisher, and in 1663 acquired the copyright of Cowley's poems, and in the following year the copyright of Waller's poems, which he obtained no doubt by purchase from Moseley's widow. Herringman was also an extensive publisher of plays and all the lighter literature of the Commonwealth and Restoration periods. His shop was the chief literary lounging place in London, and is frequently referred to in Pepys' Diary. Herringman also held a share in the King's Printing House, and in 1682 was defendant in a suit brought in the Court of Chancery by the trustees of Charles Bill, one of the children of John Bill II. [Chan. Proc, P.R.O., Mitford, 298, 69.] Mr. Arber, in his reprint of the Term Catalogues [vol. ii. p. 64a] says that Herringman was apparently the first London wholesale publisher in the modern sense of the words. He turned over his retail business at the Blue Anchor to F. Saunders and J. Knight, and devoted himself to the production of the Fourth Folio Shakespeare, Chaucer's works, and other large publishing ventures. His last entry in the Term Catalogues was in Trinity, 1693, shortly after which he appears to have retired to his native place, Carshalton, in Surrey. Here he died on January 15th, 170 3/4, and was buried in Carshalton Church, where a monument was erected to his memory. [Manning, History of Surrey, vol ii. p. 516.] By his will, which was dated the day before his death, he left to his "kinsman" John Herringman all his copies and parts of copies when he attained the age of twenty-three, the profits meanwhile to go to his widow. To the Company of Stationers he left a sum of £20 to purchase a piece of plate. [P.C.C. 40, Ash.]