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William Stansby (1572–1638) was a London printer and publisher of the Jacobean era and Caroline era eras, working under his own name from 1610. One of the most prolific printers of his time, Stansby is best remembered for publishing the landmark first folio collection of the works of Ben Jonson in 1616.
At the time, the Stationers Company included and printers as largely separate classes: publishing was generally done by the booksellers, who hired the printers to produce their books, and other printed matter. Some printers did some publishing as a secondary aspect of their primary business. Stansby followed the general pattern: the majority of his books were printed for booksellers to sell in their shops, while the remainder were works that Stansby published independently.
For Edward Blount, Stansby printed an English translation of John Owen's Latin epigrams (1619), and Six Court Comedies (1632), the first collected edition of the plays of John Lyly. And for Blount and William Barret, Stansby printed Thomas Shelton's first English translation of Miguel de Cervantes' 1605 (thus, part 1) novel Don Quixote (2 volumes, 1612).
Musical titles printed by Stansby are listed in an article by Cecil Hill and include The Teares or / LamentacioNs of / a sorrowfvll / Sovle (1614) and MADRIGALES / and / AYRES (1632). Hill, Cecil. (1972). “William Stansby and Music-Printing.” Fontes Artis Musicae 19 (January): 7–13.
Stansby printed works by Samuel Purchas for Henry Featherstone, and works by Joseph Hall for Featherstone and for Butter. He printed Sir Walter Raleigh's A History of the World (1614) for Walter Burre.Cyndia Susan Clegg, Press Censorship in Jacobean England, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2001; p. 98. And Stansby printed a wide range of works significant in their day but now largely forgotten. Sir Dudley Digges's The Defence of Trade (1615), printed for John Barnes,Miles Ogborn, Indian Ink: Script and Print in the Making of the English East India Company, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2007; pp. 116–28. and William Slater's Palae-Albion (1621), printed for Richard Meighen, are two of many examples.
Also for Meighen, Stansby printed the first edition of John Clavell's A Recantation of an Ill Led Life (1628).
In some cases, printers are identified on title pages only by initials; yet bibliographers can employ title-page colophons and other clues to make identifications. On this basis, Stansby is the "W. S." who printed the second quarto of Shakespeare's Love's Labor's Lost (1631) and the undated fourth book size of Hamlet (c. 1630), both for Smethwick.Andrew Murphy, Shakespeare in Print: A History and Chronology of Shakespeare Publishing, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003; pp. 303–4. In 1617 Stansby printed the tenth edition of Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis for William Barret.
Stansby continued to publish some works and authors originally issued by his master Windet. Perhaps the important example was Richard Hooker's Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity; Windet had published editions in 1597 and 1604, and Stansby continued with editions in 1611, 1617, 1622, and 1631–32.
Like most printers who published, Stansby had to arrange for retail sale of his works. The title page of his 1620 edition of Jonson's Epicene specifies that the work is sold by the bookseller John Browne.
Stansby's editions of two works by John Selden, Titles of Honour (1614, 1631) and Mare Clausum (1635), were notable for being among the earliest English books that printed Arabic and Turkish words. The former book, in both editions, used carved woodblocks for its non-English terms; the latter was the first English book that used movable type to print Arabic.Geoffrey Roper, "Arabic Printing and Publishing in England before 1820," Bulletin of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 12 No. 1 (1985), pp. 12–32.
One of Stansby's later projects was the 1634 edition of Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, which would be the last edition of that work prior to the revival of interest in Malory and his book in the nineteenth century.Stephanie L. Barczewski, Myth and National Identity in Nineteenth-Century Britain, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2001; p. 115. Stansby eventually sold his business to stationer Richard Bishop for £700.
In one instance, Stansby got himself into much more serious trouble. Probably in 1620, Stansby printed a topical pamphlet for Nathaniel Butter: titled A Plain Demonstration of the Unlawful Succession of Ferdinand II, Because of the Incestuous Marriage of His Parents, the work criticized the 1619 accession of the new Holy Roman Emperor. This was one of a series of pamphlets Stansby printed on the controversy that sparked the opening of the Thirty Years' War.Clegg, p. 179. The title page of the pamphlet on Ferdinand II bore the false claim that it was printed "at the Hague" – but the Stuart authorities were not fooled; first Butter, and then Stansby, were arrested for violating the regime's strict censorship policy, and Stansby's presses were damaged. Petitions for mercy from both Butter and Stansby survive in the extant records; in his, Stansby places all the blame for the affair on Butter. Both men spent some months in prison over the matter, but were eventually released.
While a prison sentence is a more substantive matter than mere fines for breaking guild rules, Butter and Stansby were far from the only stationers who were incarcerated for their professional activities. Other prominent stationers of the era, like Edward Allde, Nicholas Okes, and Thomas Archer, shared similar fates.
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