William Rayner (d. 1761; fl. 1728–1761)
William Rayner, printer and newspaper publisher, next George Tavern, Charing Cross (1731); in Faulcon Court, Southwark (1736–9); at St Andrew's, Holborn (1736).
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)
RAYNER (WILLIAM), printer and publisher in London, (1) next the George Tavern, Charing Cross, 1731; (2) Faulcon Court, near St. George's Church, Southwark, 1736–9; (3) parish of St. Andrew, Holborn, 1736. 1731(?)–1740(?). In a curious periodical called The Friendly Writer, published by a pretended Quakeress named Ruth Collins between September I732 and the following February, is given a detailed account of the prosecution of this printer for libelling Sir Robert Walpole. This account, which appears in the "third book or number for November 1732, p. 11, states that his offence was for publishing pictures with the title Robin's Reign, or Seven's the Main, which had originally appeared in The Craftsman" a year and a half before he was brought to trial, which would make the date of the publication 1731, not 1733 as given by Timperley. He was probably in business some years earlier, but in 1731 a list of books "printed for and sold by" him at the first address, appears at the end of a pamphlet entitled the History of Mortimer, published by J. Millan. [B.M.T. 2024 (3).] In 1736 he was the printer of a news-sheet called Rayner's Morning Advertiser, and on August Ith in the same year he was examined as to the publication of a pamphlet entitled A Second Letter from a Member of Partiament to his Friend in the Country, and also a ballad called The Pacifick Fleet. He denied being either the printer or the publisher of them; but admitted that his wife was employed by Mr. Michael Walker, an attorney, who was the author of the Second Letter, to fold and stitch about five hundred copies of that publication, and that he helped to distribute them. [State Papers. Dom., George II, Bundle 39/75.] Rayner was also said to have been the proprietor of the notorious journal The Craftsman, and to have employed Norton Defoe, the second son of Daniel, to write for it, paying him one guinea a week since the latter end of May or the beginning of June 1739. [Ib., Bundle 50/53.] Amongst other activities of his press were the lives of notorious criminals, one of which, The Life of Gill Smith, executed in 1738 for the murder of his wife, is in the library of the British Museum. [518. f. 33.] The date of his death has not been found.