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Author: Phillips, William

Biography:

PHILLIPS, William (fl 1810-22)

Pseudonym Paul Potion, S.A.A.

William Phillips is now celebrated in literary history as the printer of Worthing, Sussex, who together with Charles Phillips was responsible for the production of two early works by P. B. Shelley (q.v.), Poems by Victor and Cazire (with Elizabeth Shelley, 1810) and The Necessity of Atheism (1811). By 1814 his name alone appears as printer and bookseller of a number of tourist guides to the area. He brought out a second edition of the Londoner John Evans’s exhaustive two-volume Picture of Worthing in 1814 as well as the verse abridgment by “Paul Potion” listed here. A contemporary ms note on the title-page of the Poetical Picture identifies Phillips as the author. The work is, however, sometimes attributed to the surgeon John Shearsmith, who would publish A Topographical Description of Worthing (also based on Evans) with a different Worthing printer in 1824. No public records have been found that clearly identify a William Phillips born in Sussex with a brother Charles but he might have settled in Worthing from elsewhere, and Charles Phillips might not have been a brother. He is not to be confused with the London Quaker publisher and geologist William Phillips (1773-1828). The last work printed by Phillips at Worthing seems to have been a volume of poems by T. J. Llewllyn Prichard (q.v.), My Lowly Love (1822). 

 

 

Other Names:

  • W. Phillips
 

Books written (1):

Worthing/ Chichester/ Brighton/ Horsham/ London: W. Phillips/ Mason/ the libraries/ Mason/ Hersee, [1814]