Edward Allde - Life

Life

Edward Allde was part of a family of professional printers: his father John, his mother Margaret, and his widow Elizabeth and two of her children all worked in the trade. Edward Allde took over the business of his father on the elder Allde's death in 1584; he became a "freeman" (a full member) of the Stationers Company in February of that year, "by patrimony." The son continued his father's practices and publications; John Allde, for example, had issued the undated first quarto of Thomas Preston's play Cambyses sometime before 1584; Edward Allde issued the undated second quarto of the same play, sometime after 1584. The elder Allde published the first edition of Ulpian Fulwell's Like Will to Like in 1568; the younger Allde published the second edition in 1587.

At first, Edward ran his late father's business with the help of his mother; it was located at the Long Shop in the Poultry, adjoining St. Mildred's Church (and four doors away from a London prison, the Poultry Counter; the prison's stocks were outside the Allde shop door). In 1593, Edward moved into his own establishment, at the sign of the Gilded Cup in Fore Street, Cripplegate, near the Barbican; Margaret Allde continued the Long Shop operation on her own, at least until 1601.

John Allde had maintained a flourishing business, with as many as eight apprentices simultaneously; Anthony Munday had been one of them for a time, and Edward Allde served his own apprenticeship under his father. Edward also succeeded in business, keeping his two presses busy with chapbooks, playbooks, and more serious books too. He produced ballads, songbooks, and jestbooks, and was one of the "original innovators of the merry book trade;" in the years when the Stationer's Company limited ballad printing to only five of its members (1612–20), Allde was one of the five. Toward the end of his career, in the early 1620s, Allde was involved in the syndicate that produced the first English newspapers, along with Nathaniel Butter, Thomas Archer, Nicholas Bourne, William Sheffard and Bartholomew Downes.

While his output was massive and significant, Allde's craftsmanship has not been rated highly by modern scholars, critics, and bibliographers. In the succinct verdict of one commentator, "his work was poor."

It was not unusual, in this period, for stationers to run into difficulties with the authorities, both those of their guild and the higher civil administration; most were fined for infractions large and small, and some, like Butter, Archer, Nicholas Okes, and William Stansby, were imprisoned. John Allde spent time in the Poultry Compter in 1568 for printing a pro-Catholic text. (Both the Tudor and Stuart regimes were serious about censorship and control of the press.) Edward Allde ran into the same types of troubles in his career: he was fined for printing unregistered works and works to which he did not own the copyright; his presses were shut down twice, and he was once sent to prison by the Secretary of State. In 1623, he admitted to Company officials to "behaving my self turbulently and disorderly...and using unseemly and unfitting words...."