George Thomason 1600?-1666
George THOMASON 1600?-66
Biographical Note
Son of George Thomason, husbandman of Sudlow, Cheshire. In 1617 he was apprenticed to Henry Fetherstone, bookseller at The Rose in St Paul’s Churchyard, London, and became free of the Stationers’ Company in 1626. He took over the business, and later entered into a partnership with Octavian Pulleyn. In 1643 he moved to new premises at the Rose and Crown, St Paul’s Churchyard. He imported continental books and supplied the libraries of Oxford and Cambridge. From 1641 he was involved in the financial administration of the Stationers’ Company, becoming assistant warden in 1651, junior warden in 1657 and senior warden in 1661. He was arrested in 1651 due to his involvement in the Love conspiracy and was imprisoned for a short time in Whitehall.
Books
Thomason is best known for having assembled the collection of Civil War pamphlets now known as the Thomason Tracts. He began collecting in 1641, and the collection contains over 22,000 items in over 2000 volumes. His collection was acquired by the bookbinder Samuel Mearne for Charles II around 1678, and were later purchased for The British Museum by George III in 1761.
Sources
- Mendle, M. George Thomason’s intentions, in G. Mandelbrote and B. Taylor (eds), Libraries within the library, 2009, 171-186. P. Hoare (gen.ed.), The Cambridge history of libraries in Britain and Ireland. 3 vols. Cambridge, 2006. II 39.
- Spencer, L. The professional and literary connexions of George Thomason, The Library 5th ser 13 (1958), 102-118.
- Spencer, L. The politics of George Thomason, The Library 5th ser 14 (1959) 11-27.
- Stoker, David. "Thomason, George (c. 1602–1666), bookseller and collector of civil-war tracts." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
- Stoker, D. George Thomason’s intractable legacy, The Library 6th ser 14 (1992), 337-56.
- Stoker, D. and M. Kingston, George Thomason in W. Baker (ed), Pre-19th century British book collectors, 1999, 344-9.