Ichabod Dawks and his Newsletter: With an Account of the Dawks Family

Dawks is the name of a family of booksellers and printers who practised their craft in London during the seventeenth century and later. The younger Thomas Dawks was honoured with the title of ‘His Majesty’s Printer for the British Language’ in 1676. Ichabod Dawks, ‘honest Ichabod’ as Steel called him, and the best-known member of the family, published Dawks’s NewsLetter on the evenings of Post Nights (i.e. Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday) from 1696 to 1716. For this periodical a special script type in imitation of handwriting was used, the matrices of which have recently been identified. Mr Morison’s account of the Dawkses, based upon a family diary which he lately discovered, enlarges at several points our knowledge of their respective careers, and, in the case of Ichabod, demonstrates the character of his contribution to the progress of English journalism. Illustrated with type facsimiles, line blocks and nine pages of collotype facsimiles of newsletters.