Spouse(s) Sara Lodge Died 1612 Role Printer | Name Edward White Father John White | |
Edward White (c.1548 – c.1612) was a London printer and stationer whose career spanned a period of over forty years. His shop in the booksellers' district of St Paul's Churchyard was at the Sign of the Gun, where he sold many anonymous works as well as works by Thomas Kyd, Robert Greene, Anthony Munday and Christopher Marlowe. Between 1594 and 1611 he sold all three quartos of William Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus.
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Family
Edward White, born about 1548, was the son of a Suffolk mercer, John White of Bury St Edmunds. His mother's name is unknown.
Career
White began his printing career in 1565 as apprentice to William Lobley. By 1576 he was sufficiently established to take on his brother, Andrew White, as his own apprentice. In succeeding years he is known to have had eleven other apprentices. He entered his first copy in the Stationers' Register on 21 July 1577, The true history and faithful relation of a most horrible murder committed by Alphonse Diazius. On 7 April 1579 he entered Thomas Salter's The mirror of modesty, and dedicated it to his wife's step-mother, Lady Anne Lodge. Lady Lodge lived only a few months longer; on 29 December 1579 White was the first stationer to enter a work by his brother-in-law, Thomas Lodge, An Epitaph of the Lady Anne Lodge, of which no copy now survives.
He was admitted to the livery of the Stationers' Company in June 1588. Although he never attained the office of Master of the Company, he served as under warden in 1600, and as senior warden in 1606.
White's output included a great deal of popular literature. He either licensed, printed or sold some twenty plays, as well as three dozen ballads, and almost the same number of pamphlets.
White died late in 1612 or early in 1613; his last entry in the Stationers' Register bears the date 12 August 1612. His widow survived him, and with their son took over the family printing business until her own death about 1615. Among works licensed to White's son were Sir John Fitz's Ghost (13 September 1605), A new ballad of the late commotion in Herefordshire occasioned by the death of Alice Wellington, a recusant (13 September 1605), and England's joy, or the happy nuptials of Prince Frederick and the Lady Elizabeth (20 February 1613). In 1619 John Grismand partly took over the business, perhaps, Bishai suggests, because White's son was a less successful businessman than his father.
Marriage and issue
White married Sara Lodge (baptized 1549), daughter of Sir Thomas Lodge, Lord Mayor of London, by whom he had at least one son, also named Edward White.
Sara Lodge and her sister, Susan Lodge (baptized 1551), were the only two children of Sir Thomas Lodge's second marriage to Margaret Parker (d. 26 April 1552), while the physician and playwright Thomas Lodge was one of the seven children of Sir Thomas's third marriage to Anne Luddington (1528–1579). Susan Lodge married Thomas Leicester of Worleston, Chester.
Works licensed, printed or sold by White
Works licensed to White in the Stationers' Register and printed or sold by him include: