25 Facts About Jacob Tonson

Jacob Tonson, sometimes referred to as Jacob Tonson the Elder, was an eighteenth-century English bookseller and publisher.

Jacob Tonson was the founder of the famous Kit-Cat Club.

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.

Jacob Tonson was sufficiently well off to purchase plays by Otway and Nahum Tate.

In 1681 the brothers Richard and Jacob Tonson joined in publishing Dryden's Spanish Friar, and in 1683 Jacob Tonson obtained a valuable property by purchasing from Barbazon Ailmer, the assignee of Samuel Simmons, one half of his right in Paradise Lost.

Jacob Tonson afterwards said he had made more by Paradise Lost than by any other poem.

Serious financial differences arose between the poet and his publisher, and Dryden's letters to Jacob Tonson are full of complaints of meanness and sharp practice and of refusals to accept clipped or bad money.

Jacob Tonson begged hard for five pounds more than Tonson offered for some of her verses.

Jacob Tonson published Congreve's reply to Collier, and at a later date The Faithful Friend and The Confederacy by his friend, Sir John Vanbrugh.

About 1703 Jacob Tonson purchased a house at Barn Elms, and built a room there for the club.

One night in seven at this convenient seat Indulgent Bocaj [Jacob Tonson] did the Muses treat.

Jacob Tonson was satirised in several skits, and it was falsely alleged that he had been expelled by the club, or had withdrawn from the society in scorn of being their jest any longer.

In 1703 Jacob Tonson went to the Dutch Republic to obtain paper and engravings for the fine edition of Caesar's Commentaries, which was ultimately published under Samuel Clarke's care in 1712.

In 1705 Jacob Tonson published Addison's Remarks on several Parts of Italy.

Nicholas Rowe's edition of Shakespeare, in six volumes, was published early in 1709 by Jacob Tonson, who had previously advertised for materials.

Jacob Tonson came to me t'other day to make his court; but I told him it was too late, and that it was not my doing.

Jacob Tonson appears in Rowe's Dialogue between Jacob Tonson and Congreve, in imitation of Horace:.

In one of several amusing letters from Vanbrugh, now at Bayfordbury, Jacob Tonson, who was then in Paris, was congratulated upon his luck in South Sea stock, and there is other evidence that he made a large sum in connection with Law's Mississippi scheme.

The elder Jacob Tonson seems to have given up business about 1720.

Jacob Tonson had bought the Hazells estate at Ledbury, Herefordshire, and in 1721 he was sending presents of cider to the Dukes of Grafton and Newcastle, the latter of whom called Tonson "my dear old friend," and asked him to give him his company in Sussex.

Jacob Tonson published a quarto edition of Waller's works, edited by Fenton, in 1729, and an edition of Lord Lansdowne's works in 1732.

Pope was annoyed to find in 1731 that Jacob Tonson was to be one of the publishers of Lewis Theobald's proposed edition of Shakespeare, in which he feared an attack on his own editorial work, but he professed to be satisfied with the assurances he received.

Pope says that Jacob Tonson obtained portraits from Kneller without payment by flattering him and sending him presents of venison and wine.

Jacob Tonson carried on the publishing business in the Strand.

In 1775 letters of administration of the goods of Jacob Tonson, left unadministered by Richard Tonson, were granted to William Baker, esq.