John Wolfe (printer) - Early Career

Early Career

Wolfe may have come from a family in Sussex. For years, scholars wrongly assumed that he was the son of famed printer Reyner Wolfe on the basis of their mutual name and occupation. However, John Wolfe testified that his "poore oulde father" was alive in May 1584, some ten years after Reyner Wolfe died. Because Wolfe was a member of the Fishmongers' Company, there is speculation that a fishmonger named Thomas Wolfe, who resided in the parish of St. Nicholas Cole Abbey, may have been John Wolfe's father, and that John Wolfe entered the Company through patrimony. No conclusive evidence has been found to validate this theory though.

On 25 May 1562, Wolfe entered a ten-year apprenticeship with printer John Day. Because apprenticeships generally ended when the apprentice turned 24 (the minimum age for London freemen), scholars surmise that Wolfe was born around 1548. Wolfe did not stay the full ten years. In the same testimony in which he mentioned his "poore oulde father", he claimed that he served Day for a "space of seaven yeares", the minimum term for an apprenticeship under the Statute of Artificers of 1563.

Some time after his apprenticeship ended, Wolfe traveled to Italy to perfect his trade. By 1576, he was in Florence publishing religious poems. In Gabriel Harvey's 1593 work New Letter of Notable Contents, which was printed by Wolfe, Harvey addresses his printer and "loving friend" as one who "hath read and heard so many gallant Florentine discourses". In 1579, he published his first books in England and became one of the few non-members of the Stationers' Company granted the privilege of entering titles in its Register. An edition of the first book he entered in the Register found its way to the 1581 Frankfurt Book Fair. At least 20 other works of his appear in the catalogues of the annual book fair between 1581 and 1591, which suggests that he may have been a regular attendee. Una essortatione al timor di Dio, an undated book by Italian Jacob Acontius that bears Wolfe's imprint, may have been published abroad sometime between 1579 and 1581, furthering the image of Wolfe as a frequent traveler to Continental Europe. In the work, Wolfe describes himself as a servant of Philip Sidney.

The only other printer of Italian works in England at the time was John Charlewood; both Charlewood and Wolfe had printed works of Giordano Bruno.