Benjamin Billingsley (fl. 1664–1707)

Identifiers

Occupations

  • Bookseller
  • Mapseller
  • Patent Medicine Seller

Dates

  • Freedom: 1664

Names

  • Benjamin Billingsley
  • Benjamine Billingsley

Benjamin Billingsley, bookseller, publisher, map seller; at the Printing Press at the Entrance into Gresham College / in Broad Street over against the Church (1664–6?); at the Printing Press in Cornihill, near the Royal Exchange (1669–79); under the piazza of the Royal Exchange (1695).

A Dictionary of the Printers and Booksellers who were at Work in England, Scotland and Ireland from 1668 to 1725, by Henry Plomer (1922)

BILLINGSLEY (BENJAMIN), bookseller in London, (i) Printing Press, at the entrance into Gresham College, Broad Street; over against the Church; (2) (a) within the South-west Piazza, (b) under the Piazza, of the Royal Exchange, Comhill; over against Pope's Head Alley. 1669–1706. Although carrying on business at the sign of the "Printing Press", Benjamin Billingsley was not a printer but a bookseller. His first entry (with O. Blagrave) in the Term Catalogues was The Epitome of the Art of Husbandry. [T.C. I.9.] According to Dunton [p. 230] he suffered for some years from a mental disorder during which time his wife and son managed the business. His name appears in the Term Catalogues for the last time in Trinity Term 1698 [T.C. III. 83], but in 1706 he published the ninth edition of Nathaniel Strong's England's Perfect Schoolmaster. [Haz. III. 311.] Amongst his numerous publications was A True Account of the Most Considerable Occurrences that have hapned in the Warre between the English and the Indians in New England, 1676.

Notes & Queries "London Booksellers Series" (1931–2)

BILINGSLEY, BENJAMIN. He conducted a bookselling business under the Grand Piazza at the Royal Exchange. At the beginning of the century he "was already established here, but, so Dunton affirms, he was subject to fits of insanity, during one of which, lasting several years, his business was managed by his wife and son. His name does not appear in advertisements after 1706.

—Frederick T. Wood, 25 July 1931

 

BILLINGSLEY, BENJAMIN. I have a record of one of his imprints where his address is given as at the sign of the Printing Press, in Cornhill. Nevertheless he was a bookseller not a printer.

—Ambrose Heal, 8 August 1931