Edward Blount

Edward Blount (or Blunt) (1565 – 1632) was a London publisher of the Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Caroline eras, noted for his publication, in conjunction with William and Isaac Jaggard, of the First Folio of Shakespeare's plays in 1623.

The Stationers' Register states that he was the son of Ralph Blount or Blunt, merchant tailor of London, and apprenticed himself in 1578 for ten years to the stationer William Ponsonby. Blount became a "freeman" (a full member) of the Stationers' Company on June 25, 1588.

Among the most important of his publications are Giovanni Florio's Italian-English dictionary and his translation of Montaigne, plus Marlowe's "Hero and Leander" (1598), and the "Six Court Comedies" of John Lyly (1632). He himself translated "Ars Aulica, or the Courtier's Arte" (1607) from the Italian of Lorenzo Ducci, and "Christian Policie" (1632) from the Spanish of Juan de Santa María.

Though best remembered for the First Folio, Blount also published works by Miguel de Cervantes, Ben Jonson, Samuel Daniel, William Camden, and other important authors. Blount has been described as "a genuine lover of literature, with discriminating and generous taste." [Sheavyn, p. 67.] Beyond the Folio, Blount had other minor connections with the Shakespearean canon. In 1601 he published "Love's Martyr," the volume that contained "The Phoenix and the Turtle"; he entered both "Antony and Cleopatra" and "Pericles, Prince of Tyre" in the Stationers' Register in 1608, though he published neither. Blount was also a close friend and professional colleague of Thomas Thorpe, the publisher of Shakespeare's sonnets.

Notes

References

* Sheavyn, Phoebe. "The Literary Profession in the Elizabethan Age." Manchester, University of Manchester Press, 1909.
*