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Author: McCreery, John

Biography:

MCCREERY, John (c. 1768-1832: DIB)

He was born in Burndennet near Strabane, Co. Tyrone, N. Ireland in 1768 or 1769 (his age at death is given as 63), the son of a printer who was also named John McCreery and who died in London in 1811. He was apprenticed to a printer in Liverpool, where he became part of a set of radical thinkers who supported the French Revolution, abolition, and social reform. Their leader, William Roscoe (q.v.), encouraged McCreery to set up his own printing business and had him print his Life of Lorenzo de’ Medici (1796). That brought him to the attention of London publishers, notably Cadell and Davies, who employed him on several ambitious printing projects both before and after he moved to London in 1805. On 13 Aug. 1796 he married Phebe Hankey (1771-1849) in her parish church of St. Oswald’s, Oswestry, Shropshire. They had two daughters, Sarah and Phebe, whose births were recorded as nonconformist in Liverpool in 1798 and 1802 respectively and then both registered at Dr. Williams’s Library, London, in 1825. The first edition of his poem The Press, designed to celebrate the art of printing, was dedicated to his patron, Roscoe. In London McCreery continued his radical activism and printed some works sympathetic to the causes he supported, though at risk of prosecution himself. He retired from business in 1828 and returned to Liverpool, but died of cholera in Paris on 18 Apr. 1832 and was buried at Kensal Green Cemetery, London. (DIB 1 May 2023; “MacCreery, John,” DNB; ancestry.com 1 May 2023; findmypast.com 1 May 2023)

 

Books written (3):

Liverpool/ London: J. McCreery/ Cadell and Davies, 1803
London: T. Cadell, and W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 1827
2nd edn. London: William Pickering, 1828