22/09/2011

Printers of the Catechism

The first edition of Beddome's Catechism in 1752 was published by John Ward in London. John Ward (c 1679–1758) was the son of a Baptist minister, also John Ward, and was an English teacher, a supporter of learned societies, and a biographer, remembered for his work on the Gresham College professors, of which he was one. He has an entry in the ODNB and Wikipedia has this here. Also see this article here and this one too. This is probably the wrong Ward, however. The Ward we want is the son of Aaron Ward, mentioned in a later blog.
By 1776 Ward was dead and for the second corrected edition Beddome turned to a Methodist in Bristol, William Pine (1739-1803) printer first of the Bristol Chronicle (from 1760) and then the original printer of the Bristol Gazette (from 1767). A Methodist he had a large business in Wine Street, Bristol. He was associated at one point with the Quaker Joseph Fry (1728-1787) of chocolate fame when Fry turned his attention in 1764 to type-founding, following the success of John Baskerville. Their new type may be traced in several works issued between 1764 and 1770. In 1774 Pine printed at Bristol a Bible in a pearl type, asserted to be ‘the smallest a bible was ever printed with.’ To all these editions notes were added to escape the penalty of infringing the patent. In 1776 Pine published Beddome's catechism but in 1777 the firm became J Fry and sons, reprinting octavo and folio Bibles and Pine subsequently withdrew entirely. Pine was John Wesley's printer until by 1775 Wesley found him too much of a Calvinist and pro-American independence. He married three times and had children. His second wife (from 1790) was Elizabeth Owen. His third wife outlived him.

1 comment:

New Beginning Projects said...

I have a good collection of Beddome's hymns in my ehymnbook web site collection.
http://ehymnbook.org/CMMS/writers.php?id=wd01352