Plutarch, The lives of the noble Grecians and Romaines, 1603 - detail, printer and publisher imprint

Description:The imprint of Shakespeare’s fellow Stratfordian.

Richard Field, who was two years older than Shakespeare, was son of Henry Field, a Stratford tanner. In September 1579, at the age of seventeen Richard had been apprenticed to London printer George Bishop, and he began his training at the printing house of French immigrant, Thomas Vautrollier. Field married Vautrollier’s widow in 1588 and became head of the very successful printing-house whose books were known to Shakespeare and which was the first to print his poems of Venus and Adonis, in 1593, and The Rape of Lucrece in 1594. This reprint edition of Plutarch's Lives , first printed by Vautrollier in 1579, was printed by Field, for sale by Thomas White, and the library's copy has a contemporary ownership signature 'Roger Prichard' on the title-page.

Full title: Plutarch, The lives of the noble Grecians and Romaines compared together Translated out of Greeke into French by James Amiot... and out of French into English by Sir Thomas North, Imprinted at London by Richard Field for Thomas Wight, 1603.