Joseph Downing (fl. 1670–1724)

DOWNING (JOSEPH), printer and bookseller in London, St. Bartholomew's Close, 1670–1724. He may have been some relation of William Downing the printer, whose name appears in the list of printing houses in London in 1675. But there is reason for believing that Joseph Downing was at work as a printer as early as 1670. Downing was the printer of the piratical edition of Danvers's Treatise of Baptism, complained of to a House of Lords Committee in 1677 by Francis Smith (q.v., and Hist. MSS. Comm., Rept. ix, App., p. 78.] In 1707 he issued A New Catalogue of Books [B.M. 11900. a. 16 (i)]; and in 1708 he printed a broadside, Proposals for erecting Libraries in Wales. [Harl. 5958 (51).] In the same year he published Defoe's Account of some Remarkable Passages in the Life of a Private Gentleman. As a bookseller Downing dealt almost entirely in theological literature, and a list of eight of his publications is given at the end of the Rev. John Burrough's Two Sermons, which were printed and sold by him in 1714. [B.M. 4454. b. 38 (2).]