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John Dunn (1735-1817)

Written by Barry McKay

Occupations: Bookseller and Printer

John Dunn, the son of a basket-maker, was born in September 1735 at Harras Moor, then a hamlet to the north-east of Whitehaven. No evidence has come to light for his early years, but it is likely that he received his education at one of the several private academies in Whitehaven. It is possible he served an apprenticeship in one or other of the book trades. If so and if his apprenticeship term was served in Whitehaven, then his master was perhaps either William Masheder (fl. 1750-57) or John Copeland (fl. 1750-73).

It is not until 1762 that we first have a record of John Dunn’s life and activities in the book trades. In that year he appeared in a census taken of the town’s inhabitants wherein he is described as a stationer resident in a property in the Market Place which he shared with one other unnamed person; presumably his wife Jane (the daughter of Timothy Nicholson, a merchant in Whitehaven).  At some point in his life Dunn appears to have lost a leg, for Richard Ferguson has left a vivid description of Dunn as being ‘famed for his powdered pigtail, his wooden leg, and his manufacture of red ink.’

The year 1763 saw Dunn’s first dated publication: Æsop’s Fables, a fourth edition translated by Samuel Croxall (c.1690-1752; ODNB) which was illustrated with fifty woodcuts, one of which, an illustration to the fable of the lion and the fox, is signed on the block with the initials R M. This engraver can with some confidence be identified as a Newcastle printer and engraver Robert Marchbank whose ‘types, presses, implements and printing materials’ had been sold by auction in 1762.

During the course of his career Dunn’s imprint was to appear on a further dozen books including the fourth edition of one of the earliest texts on the English lake district: John Brown’s anonymous A description of the lake at Keswick (1772), and the first provincially printed edition of Scarronides  (1776.) by Charles Cotton (1630-1687; ODNB). Although none of Dunn’s imprints is common perhaps the rarest is his printing of Reflections on courtship and marriage: together with thoughts on education… an anonymous work attributed to Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790; ODNB) which also contains Letters to a very young lady, on her marriage (1775) by Jonathan Swift (1667-1745; ODNB) known only from a single surviving copy in the Library of Congress.

In 1771 Dunn was involved in a minor contretemps with the actor, playwright and songwriter George Alexander Stevens (1710-1784; ODNB) who had visited Whitehaven in April 1767 while touring his satirical ‘Lecture on heads’ a performance parodying the prevailing popularity for physiognomy. During the course of that visit Dunn prevailed upon Stevens to mark up a manuscript collection of popular songs and, wherever possible, to attribute the authorship. In 1771 Dunn printed, and, together with the partnership of Hawes, Clarke and Collins of Paternoster Row, London, published this collection as The choice spirit’s chaplet: or, a poesy from Parnassus. In a ‘Notice to the public’ in his volume Dunn wrote that Stevens had placed an advertisement in several London newspapers disavowing any role in the volume. Dunn disputed this vehemently and further stated that while in Whitehaven Stevens had ‘examined and marked up the above collection from no less than eleven different volumes, which he was near a week in doing.’ Furthermore, Dunn made available for public examination at the shop of the London booksellers a number of copies of the songs included in the collection which Stevens had corrected and to which he had affixed his name. At this remove, one might wonder if Stevens’ irritation was motivated by an absence of any payment received by him for his editorial input.

On 5 November 1776 Dunn issued the first number of a weekly Newspaper The Cumberland Chronicle which claimed a number of agents for the taking in of advertisements and subscriptions. These suggest it anticipated a wide coverage across the lake counties and extended to London, Edinburgh, and Dublin, together with several other towns and cities in the north and midlands of England and southern Scotland. Dunn doubtless established his newspaper in competition to The Cumberland Pacquet, or Ware’s Whitehaven Advertiser which John Ware and his son had established in October 1774. In a notice to the public in the first issue, Dunn disavowed any political affiliations and disclaimed an argument that he was guilty competition ‘for it is well known that the public is worse served under a monopoly.’

The combination of stationer, bookseller and printer was typical of a provincial book trades member in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and, in the case of some the less typical roles of circulating library, and newspaper proprietor, Dunn also retailed patent medicines, kept the seating plan of the theatre at his shop and also held a share in the ‘Cumberland Register,’ a business which included insurance on lives and shipping, the provision of servants, the arranging of apprenticeships, the buying of annuities, advowsons and chaplaincies, with livings exchanged and curates provided. Beyond all these activities Dunn also acted as an agent for the state lottery and for the provision of lodging and diet with a reputable family for those in want of such convenience.

However, perhaps Dunn’s most significant contribution to print culture in the lake counties was to be that of the first printer of chapbooks in the region. These small books of often fanciful history, ballads, and contemporary popular songs had been introduced into northern England in the early eighteenth-century by John White of Newcastle (1689-1769) and over the following century and a half a large number were printed in Cumbria, most notably by Ann Bell (fl. late 18thc) and Anthony Soulby (b.1740) both of Penrith (qqv).

Only nine chapbooks have been located which carry the imprint of John Dunn as the printer, to which may be added a further nine by his daughter Ann Dunn, and a single known example from the press of his son Brownrigg Nicholson Dunn. For the most part these have a single unifying feature in that they carry one, and sometimes several, woodcut illustrations bearing the initials of R M [Robert Marchbank]. A further sixteen chapbooks have been located that contain woodcuts with the same initials. These, however, have neither the name of the printer nor place of publication but which may be from one or other of the Dunns’ presses; indeed several are attributed to Whitehaven and usually to Ann Dunn, on the English short-title catalogue, albeit largely on the strength of her use of R M Blocks. Most of the Dunn chapbooks belong in the ‘entertaining history’ genre often drawing on ancient ballads such as The pleasant and delightful history of Thomas Hickathift and The history of Tom Thumb. The chosen woodcuts, many of which are generic blocks originally associated with particular tales are almost invariably copies of cuts found on broadside ballads of the mid-seventeenth century.

In June 1777 Dunn was embroiled in a dispute with another Whitehaven printer, Joseph Briscoe, regarding who was, and who was not, the sole agent for a patent medicine: The Panacea. At this time, and for several decades afterwards, booksellers were often agents for manufacturers of patent medicines and this minor contretemps seems to have been Dunn’s last action in the book and related trades. In September of the same year he was appointed to the office of Deputy-searcher, in the town’s port, a post involving checking for contraband.  He received the sacrament at the parish church in Moresby before taking the oath at the Cockermouth sessions.

Dunn’s business and proprietorship of the Cumberland Chronicle passed to his brother-in-law Alexander Coutts (fl.1768-d.1794), who Dunn described as having been ‘principally connected with me in the business for these fourteen years past.’ Coutts had perhaps been largely involved in Dunn’s business as a bookbinder, the trade ascribed to him at the time of his marriage to Dunn’s sister, Mary, at their marriage in October 1768. Coutts continued to trade in Whitehaven until his death in March 1794, whereupon his widow thanked the pubic for their support and begged its continuance in favour of her nephew (and John Dunn’s son) Brownrigg Nicholson Dunn (1778-1813). However, as Brownrigg Dunn was only sixteen years old at the time it seems more than likely that, for several years at least, the senior partner in the business was his sister Ann Dunn (1774-?) whose imprint appeared on several books and chapbooks between 1795? and 1801, Brownrigg Dunn’s imprint only appearing on his several imprints between 1797 and 1804. The only occasion when both of the siblings’ imprints appeared in a book was The literary life of William Brownrigg (1801) by Dr Joshua Dixon (1745-1825); the famous local physician is presumably the source of the young man’s name. In this book Ann’s name appears on the imprint with Brownrigg’s name as printer appearing at the foot of the penultimate page.

Both of the siblings made a declaration in the printer’s register under the Seditious Societies Act on 12 November 1799 (Ann repeated her declaration on 11 April 1801). Ann’s last recorded commercial activity was in 1806 and she was witness at a marriage in December 1812, before she married Thomas Duggan, a tinman, at Holy Trinity Church, Whitehaven on 15 May 1815. Brownrigg’s last dated imprint in Whitehaven was in 1804 whereupon he next appears in Redcross Street, Liverpool in 1804-5; he is last heard of in Greenwich where he died in 1813.

John Dunn meanwhile remained in Whitehaven as a customs searcher until at least 1811, the same year that the stock of his circulating library was offered for sale.  His remaining stock and the plant of the business were offered for sale at ‘the warehouse of the late Mr Dunn’ in 1817. This consisted of ‘a large quantity of books in sheets, several copperplate prints of two perspective views of Whitehaven, together with a variety of wood and metal cuts for printing, also implements for bookbinding and a number of copper-plates.’ These copper-plates included engravings of The south east prospect of Whitehaven in the year 1642 and an East prospect of the town and harbour of Whitehaven engraved in 1738-9 by Richard Parr (c.1707-1754) after Mathias Read (1669-1747). Restrikes from both these engraved plates, described as having formerly belonged to John Dunn, were offered for sale in an advertisement leaf by John Robinson of Whitehaven in a Carlisle edition of Robert Anderson’s Poetical works in 1820.

This sale ends the contribution of John Dunn and his family to the book trades in Whitehaven.  Although their significance was overshadowed by the father and son combination of John Ware in the final quarter of the eighteenth century, the Dunn’s importance place in Cumbrian print culture should not be underestimated.

Sources

  • Peter Bicknell, The Picturesque Scenery of the Lake District, 1990
  • Peter Blaine Thomas, The Life and Work of George Alexander Stevens, 1961 (State University Historical Dissertations and Theses, 684)
  • Mary E Burkett and David Sloss, Read’s Point of View: Painting of the Cumbrian countryside (by) Mathias Read (1669.1747), 1995
  • Cumberland Pacquet or Ware’s Whitehaven Advertiser
  • English Short-title Catalogue
  • (Richard S) Chancellor Ferguson, ‘On English Chap Books in the Biblioteca Jacksoniana in Tullie House, Carlisle, with some remarks on printing in Carlisle, Whitehaven and Penrith and other northern towns’, CW1 xiv, 1896
  • Barry McKay, ‘Three Chapbook Printers: The Dunns of Whitehaven, Ann Bell and Anthony Soulby’ in Peter Isaac and Barry McKay (eds)., Images and Texts: Their Production and Distribution in the 18th and 19th centuries, 1997
  • Newcastle Courant
  • M R Parkin (ed), The Book Trade in Liverpool to 1808, a directory, 1981
  • Whitehaven Census, 1762