Robert Foulis was born on 20 April 1707. He and his brother Andrew established the Foulis Press, printer to the University of Glasgow, which was known for the high quality of its output .
OTD 4 April 1508
April 4, 2024 by
Scotland’s first printers, Walter Chepman and Andro Myllar, completed printing John Lydgate’s poem The Complaint of the Black Knight, at their press in Edinburgh’s Old Town.
OTD 28 February 1803
February 28, 2024 by
Memorial of the Edinburgh Compositors to the Court of Session. This was a request from the compositors of Edinburgh that they be allowed to convene a meeting: the Combination Acts were in force at the time, preventing workmen from acting together to improve their conditions. Permission was granted and a request for an increase in […]
OTD 19 January 1757
January 19, 2024 by
Thomas Ruddiman was born near Banff in 1674, son of a farmer, and was educated at the local grammar school and at Aberdeen University. After a period as a private tutor, and as the schoolmaster at Laurencekirk, he moved to Edinburgh in 1700 to become the assistant librarian at the Faculty of Advocates. He was […]
OTD 15 January 1826
January 15, 2024 by
Founded in Kelso in 1796, James Ballantyne was founded in Kelso in 1796. Archibald Constable, Scott’s publisher, commissioned Ballantyne to print his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, which led to the firm’s move to Edinburgh in 1802. After setting up near Holyrood, they moved to Foulis Close in the Canongate before settling in Paul’s Work, […]
Talk by Helen Williams
July 29, 2023 by
As part of the National Trust for Scotland’s Gladstone’s Land Lecture Series, the Trust’s Honorary Secretary, Helen S Williams will be giving a talk on August 31 on Edinburgh’s Print Workers and their Organisations. Printers had a tradition of collective organisation: the typographical societies, which later became the print unions, operated as welfare organisations for […]
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