LEE, Samuel ‹ LBT 02621 ›
Floruit 1677 (A) — 1677 (A); Male
Livery Companies
| Company | Source |
|---|---|
| Haberdashers' Company |
Occupations (1)
| Occupation | Comment |
|---|---|
| Bookseller | Plomer, H.R. &c (1922) |
Addresses (2)
| Date | Address | Trade at Addr | Source | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1677000b | Dublin | Plomer, H.R. &c. (1922) | ||
| 1677, (1677-1695) | Lombard Street, - Feathers - near Pope's Head Alley, or over against the Post House | Plomer, H.R. &c. (1922) |
SOURCES & TRANSCRIPTIONS
Transcriptions
Dunton, J. (1705), p.291
Plomer, H.R. &c. (1922), pp.186-7
LEE (SAMUEL), bookseller in London and Dublin; London, Feathers, Lombard Street, (a) near Pope's Head Alley, (b) over against the Post House. 1677-95. Began publishing in 1677, when he brought himself into notice as the compiler and publisher of the earliest known London Directory, A Collection of the names of the Merchants in and about the City of London. It was a small octavo, issued at a shilling, and was entered in the Registers of the Company of Stationers by Daniel Major { MAJOR, Daniel ‹ LBT 14308 › }, Stationer, on Lee's behalf, the latter not being a freeman of the Company. Major was joint publisher of the work, which was advertised in the Term Catalogue for Mich., Lee's name appearing first. [T.C. I. 294.] That the copyright was his is proved by the fact that on November 26th, 1677, a warrant was passed for a grant to him of the sole rights of publication for fourteen years. [S. P. Dom. Entry Book, 334, p. 439.]
At the time of the Popish Plot he published several broadsides, and in Trin. 33, Chas. II [1681-2] Henry Hills { HILLS, Henry ( - 1690) ‹ LBT 13064 › } brought an action against him in the Court of Common Pleas for slander in saying that there was a principal member of the Stationers' Company who had sent for a Dutch printing-press and letters and printed treasonable and seditious hooks, and upon being pressed declaring it was Mr. Hills the King's Printer. Hills claimed £1,000 damages. [C.P.R. 2993, Trin. 33, Chas. II. m. 508 recto.] This is Dunton's character of Samuel Lee [p. 214]: "Such a Pirate, such a Cormorant was never before. Copies, Books, Men, Shops, all was one, he held no propriety, right or wrong, good or bad, till at last he began to be known, and the booksellers not enduring so ill a man among them to disgrace them, spewed him out, and off he marched for Ireland where he acted as felonious-Lee as he did in London."
Lee's name is found for the last time in the Term Catalogues in Hil. 1684. [T.C. II. 65.] In Dublin he issued an edition of The Present State of Europe, I693, and one of Dionysius Syrus' Explication of the History of Jesus Christ, 1695. [B.M. 3224. b. 18.] He is believed to have died soon after this.