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Author: Darton, William

Biography:

Darton, William (1755-1819: ODNB)

The son of a Tottenham innkeeper, John Darton, and his wife Ann (Brampton) Darton, he was apprenticed to a London engraver. After the death of his father in 1774, however, he returned to Tottenham, where he ran a shop. In 1777 he joined the Society of Friends and in 1778 married a Quaker woman, Hannah Pace, with whom he had eleven children. In 1787 the family moved to London, where Darton established himself as an engraver, stationer, printer, and publisher. His partnership with another Quaker printer, Joseph Harvey, which began in 1791, proved a flourishing concern, with a specialization in books for children, some of which Darton wrote and illustrated himself. (The companion to his Present for a Little Girl, the Present for a Little Boy, is omitted from this bibliography because it contains fewer than ten pages of verse.) One of his sons became a partner in the firm and took over when his father retired; another, the eldest son William, was apprenticed to his father and later established his own publishing business in the same line. (ODNB 4 July 2018)

 

Books written (4):

London: Darton and Harvey, 1797
Philadelphia: Jacob Johnson, 1804
Baltimore: Warner and Hanna, and J. Vance and Co., 1806
London: Darton and Harvey, 1825