Andrew Spottiswoode

Andrew Spottiswoode (19 February 1787 – 20 February 1866) was a Scottish printer, publisher and politician, MP for Saltash from 1826 to 1830, and Colchester from 1830 to 1831.[1]

Andrew Spottiswoode
Broome Hall, Surrey

Life

He was the fourth son of John Spottiswoode (died 1805) of Spottiswoode, Berwick and Margaret Penelope Strahan, daughter of William Strahan. He was educated at Edinburgh High School. The family descended from John Spottiswoode (1565–1639), archbishop of St. Andrews and lord chancellor of Scotland.[1]

Spottiswoode lived at 9 Bedford Square, London and Broome Hall, Surrey.[1]

A. and R. Spottiswoode

In 1819 Andrew and his brother Robert took over the running of the printing business of their uncle Andrew Strahan. They brought in steam-powered printing presses. They were also publishers, of works by Henry Fuseli and William Henry Pyne among others, including Anna Eliza Bray's memoir of her husband Charles Alfred Stothard.[2][3]

King's Printer
Main article: British Bible monopolies campaigns

In 1830, Strahan was granted a renewed 30-year patent as King's Printer.[4] It resulted in a successful petition against Spottiswoode's election in Colchester, on the grounds that he was a government contractor.[5] The monopoly it conferred was also attacked by Joseph Hume, a Radical colleague of Daniel Whittle Harvey to whom Spottiswoode had come second in Colchester (which elected two members). Hume made allegations about the patent, beginning a period in which the status of the monopoly was brought into play.[1]

Spottiswoode gave evidence on Bible printing costs to a parliamentary committee in 1832, as did David Hunter Blair who held the Scottish patent as King's Printer.[6] An attack on him by the Baptist minister Thomas Curtis, on the grounds of inaccurate printing, appeared in 1833.[7][8]

Family

Spottiswoode married Mary (1801–1870), daughter of Thomas Norton Longman, the printer; they had two sons and three daughters.[1][9] One of the sons was the mathematician and physicist William Spottiswoode.[10]

References
  1. "SPOTTISWOODE, Andrew (1787-1866), of 9 Bedford Square, Mdx. and Broome Hall, Dorking, Surr. - History of Parliament Online". www.historyofparliamentonline.org. Retrieved 11 August 2018.
  2. "Spottiswoode and Co - Graces Guide". www.gracesguide.co.uk.
  3. "A. and R. Spottiswoode (London), Royal Academy of Arts". www.royalacademy.org.uk.
  4. Eyre and Spottiswoode, gracesguide.co.uk. Retrieved 18 November 2018.
  5. "Colchester 1820–1832, History of Parliament Online". www.histparl.ac.uk.
  6. Howsam, Leslie (8 August 2002). Cheap Bibles: Nineteenth-Century Publishing and the British and Foreign Bible Society. Cambridge University Press. pp. 112–113. ISBN 978-0-521-52212-0.
  7. Curtis, Thomas (1833). The Existing Monopoly, an Inadequate Protection of the Authorised Version of Scripture. Four Letters to the Right Hon. and Right Rev. the Lord Bishop of London; with Specimens of the International, and Other Departures from the Authorised Standard. To which is Added, a Postscript, Containing the "complaints" of a London Committee of Ministers on the Subject; the Reply of the Universities; and a Report on the Importance of the Alterations Made. Effingham Wilson.
  8. Campbell, Gordon (28 October 2010). Bible: The Story of the King James Version 1611-2011. Oxford University Press. p. 149. ISBN 978-0-19-955759-2.
  9. Brake, Laurel; Demoor, Marysa (2009). Dictionary of Nineteenth-century Journalism in Great Britain and Ireland. Academia Press. p. 377. ISBN 978-90-382-1340-8.
  10. "Spottiswoode biography". www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk. Retrieved 11 August 2018.
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