Joseph Pote (1704–1787; fl. 1726–1756)
Joseph Pote, printer, bookseller, and publisher, 1726–1756; at the Golden Door over against Suffolk House, Charing Cross; at Isaac Newton's Head near Charing Cross; in Eton (from 1729). Apprenticed to Daniel Brown, 1718; married daughter of bookseller Thomas Bartlet in Eton; father of Thomas Pote, who took over his father's business in 1769.
A Dictionary of the Printers and Booksellers who were at work in England, Scotland and Ireland from 1726 to 1775, by Henry Plomer et al. (1932)
POTE (JOSEPH), bookseller, printer, and publisher in London and Eton: London, (1) The Golden Door, over against Suffolk House, Charing Cross, 1726–8; (2) Isaac Newton's Head, the corner of Suffolk Street near Charing Cross, 1729–30. Eton, 1730–87. Joseph Pote began his career as a bookseller and publisher in London, like many of his contemporaries, by publishing a Sermon. This was by Richard Colier, Vicar of Kingston-on-Thames, and is advertised in Wilford's Monthly Catalogue of November 1726; in the same issue Pote is named as one of the booksellers taking subscriptions for J. Morgan's History of Algiers. Early in the following year he issued a catalogue of his stock. [Nichols, III. 660.] In 1728 Pote published the Rev. John Chapman's Objections of a late Anonyous Writer ... considered, and in 1729 Entick's Evidence of Christianity; The Foreigner's Guide to London, and an English translation of Perrault's Contes des fées. Either in that year or in 1730 he moved to Eton and set up a press there. What induced him to make this change does not appear to be known; but during the year 1730 he published a compilation of his own, a Catalogus Alumnorum, which bears the imprint Etonae apud Josephum Pote 1730. In 1737 he undertook the publication of Dr. William Cave's Historia Literaria, and a correspondent having asked why it was necessary to print the work by subscription, Pote pointed out that if it were published without such a guarantee, it would be at once pirated either abroad or in Ireland, with the certain result of ruining the venture [A Letter to A ... B.... By Joseph Poet, 1737]. The work was published in two handsome folio volumes, printed at the Oxford University Press, the first in 1740 and the second in 1743. From his own press came The History and Antiquities of Windsor, with notes on the Knights of the Garter, illustrated with copper-plates, and published in 1749. Joseph Pote died March 3rd, 1787, and was succeeded by his son Thomas. His daughter married John Williams, bookseller, of Fleet Street, and publisher of the North Briton.