Edward Blount

Edward Blount (or Blunt) (1565 – 1632) was the printer, in conjunction with William and Isaac Jaggard, of Mr William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories and Tragedies (1623), generally known as the First Folio of Shakespeare's plays. It was produced under the direction of John Heminges (d. 1630) and Henry Condell (d. 1627), both of whom had been Shakespeare's colleagues at the Globe Theatre, but as Blount combined the functions of printer and editor on other occasions, it is fair to conjecture that he to some extent edited the First Folio. Blount was also a close friend of Thomas Thorpe, the publisher of the Sonnets.

The Stationers' Register states that he was the son of Ralph Blount or Blunt, merchant tailor of London, and apprenticed himself in 1578 for ten years to William Ponsonby, a stationer. He became a freeman of the Stationers' Company in 1588.

Among the most important of his publications are Giovanni Florio's Italian-English dictionary and his translation of Montaigne, Marlowe's Hero and Leander, and the Sixe Court Comedies of John Lyly. He himself translated Ars Aulica, or the Courtier's Arte (1607) from the Italian of Lorenzo Ducci, and Christian Policie (1632) from the Spanish of Juan de Santa María.

Though best remembered for the First Folio, Blount also published works by Miguel de Cervantes, Ben Jonson, Samuel Daniel, William Camden, and other important authors; he has been described as "a genuine lover of literature, with discriminating and generous taste." Beyond the Folio, Blount had other minor connections with the Shakespearean canon. In 1601 he published Love's Martyr, the volume that contained The Phoenix and the Turtle; he entered both Antony and Cleopatra and Pericles, Prince of Tyre in the Stationers' Register in 1608, though he published neither.

See also

• Robert Allot
• Cuthbert Burby
• Walter Burre
• Philip Chetwinde
• Thomas Creede
• Richard Field

• Henry Herringman
• William Jaggard
• Humphrey Moseley
• Peter Short
• Valentine Simmes
• Thomas Thorpe

References

• Sheavyn, Phoebe. The Literary Profession in the Elizabethan Age. Manchester, University of Manchester Press, 1909.
• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)