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A REPUTATION FOR EXCELLENCE
A History of the Glasgow Printing Industry
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Part Three - Expansion
The most accomplished printing contemporary of the Foulis brothers
in Glasgow was Robert Urie. In octavos and duodecimos he was certainly
their match, though his few quartos and folios are disappointing.
Urie, the son of a small landowner in Cathcart, near Glasgow, was
apprentice to Alexander Miller and began printing in his own right
in 1740. He was not alone in the venture, his imprint being ‘Robert
Urie and Company’, but it is not clear with whom he was in
partnership. Advertisements would suggest that the partners were
Andrew Stalker and Alexander Carlile, joint publishers of the Glasgow
Journal, the newspaper which began in 1741 and was printed by Urie.
During the period in which Urie printed in partnership his work
is good without being in any way remarkable, but with the dissolution
of partnership in 1747 there is a marked change. Influenced no doubt
by the Foulis brothers, Urie rid himself of cluttered title-pages,
acquired new type, printed on good quality paper and generally raised
the standard of his work. In 1750 he produced what may be considered
his finest works, a Greek New Testament and an edition of Buchanan’s
Psalms. Urie continued as a printer until 1757, in which year the
first book bearing the imprint ‘Printed for Robert Urie’
was issued from what was clearly his press. Thereafter Urie himself
printed only occasionally. It is probable that from 1757 onwards
he devoted himself to the bookselling side of his business and left
the printing to William Smith,
another Miller apprentice, who worked with Urie and, on his death,
succeeded him. There is no mention of printing presses or equipment
in Urie’s will.
Not the least interesting feature of Urie’s work is his choice
of books for publication. If this reflects his own taste he was
a man of some culture with an inclination towards philosophy, history
and poetry, with little of his contemporaries’ interest in
sermons. He printed very few classics in Greek or Latin, perhaps
not caring to compete with the Foulis brothers, but a large number
of translations from the French, in particular the works of Voltaire,
Fénelon and the Abbé Vertot. In all he published more
than twenty Voltaire translations, many within a year of their first
appearance in English. He did not, however, indulge his taste at
the expense of his pocket, as his will indicates a fair measure
of financial success. He died in 1771 at the age of fifty-eight
years.
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Volume 2 published 1994
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