Jacob Tonson the Elder (1655/6–1736) and Jacob Tonson the Younger (1682–1735)

Jacob Tonson the Elder was born in 1656 in London, the son of Jacob Tonson, a barber-surgeon, and Elizabeth Walbancke. Little is known about his early life, although his knowledge of Latin indicates that he received some form of classical education. Having been apprenticed to a bookseller at the age of fourteen, he set up his own publishing business in 1677, initially working in association with other publishers, principally his elder brother Richard.

In 1679, Tonson acquired the rights to John Dryden’s Troilus and Cressida, marking the beginning of a long and fruitful, if at times strained, collaboration which extended beyond poetry and drama to translations of classical works and ‘miscellanies’, both of which were popularized as a result of Dryden’s influence and Tonson’s promotional flair. Translations made up around half of Tonson’s list by the mid-1680s and continued to appear with regularity throughout the early 1700s, culminating in a lavish multi-authored translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses in 1717. He branched also into academic publishing, producing a series of Latin texts for Cambridge University, and, in 1712, a monumental edition of Caesar’s works, edited by Samuel Clarke.

The core of Tonson’s reputation is founded, however, on his role in the formation of the English literary canon. His editions of Milton’s Paradise Lost, published via the subscription model in 1688, and of Shakespeare’s works, edited by Nicholas Rowe and published in 1709, helped to cement those authors’ pre-eminence within the hierarchy of English literature. In the intervening years, he built up a portfolio that included many of the most prominent writers of his day, including Aphra Behn, Abraham Cowley, Edmund Spenser, and John Vanburgh.

As his career progressed, Tonson became increasingly involved in Whig political circles as an early (and perhaps a founding) member of the Kit-Cat Club. This association brought him into contact with writers such as Richard Steele, Joseph Addison, and William Congreve, whose works he began to publish. Tonson leveraged his connections within the Whig aristocracy to obtain patronage and sponsorship.

In around 1718, Tonson stepped back from active publishing and transferred his copyrights and responsibilities to his nephew, Jacob Tonson the Younger, who had been active in the business by that point for well over a decade. Having failed in his ambition to become a Member of Parliament, the elder Tonson retired to a country estate, where he continued his correspondence with prominent Whig politicians and literary connections, and maintained, if at a distance, engagement with the book trade, until his death in 1736.

During the first two decades of the 1700s, when Jacob Tonson the Younger began to take an active role in the business, it not always possible to distinguish his activities from those of his uncle. However, he seems to have been left in charge during the elder Tonson’s trips to the Continent in search of printing materials, and certainly he was instrumental in purchasing over 100 titles from Henry Herringham and in securing the contract to publish the London Gazette. Following his uncle’s retirement, the younger Tonson maintained the business’s influence through reprints and collected editions, and through government contracts, but added few notable new authors, with the exceptions of John Donne, John Gay, and Colley Cibber. He died before his uncle, in 1735, leaving the business to his own two sons Jacob and Richard.