Edward 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. 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.