Henry Denham was one of the outstanding
English printers of the sixteenth century.
He was apprenticed to
Richard Tottel and took up the freedom of the
Stationers' Company
The Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers (until 1937 the Worshipful Company of Stationers), usually known as the Stationers' Company, is one of the livery companies of the City of London. The Stationers' Company was formed in 1 ...
on 30 August 1560. In 1564 he set up his own printing house in
White Cross Street,
Cripplegate
Cripplegate was a city gate, gate in the London Wall which once enclosed the City of London, England.
The Cripplegate gate lent its name to the Cripplegate Wards of the City of London, ward of the City, which encompasses the area where the gat ...
, but in the following year he moved to
Paternoster Row
Paternoster Row is a street in the City of London that was a centre of the London publishing trade, with booksellers operating from the street. Paternoster Row was described as "almost synonymous" with the book trade. It was part of an area call ...
, at the sign of the Star, where he remained for many years. His printing office was well supplied with good type in all sizes, from
nonpareil to
great primer, and he had a fine range of
initial letters, ornaments and
borders. He was particularly fond of arranging his titles with a lace border formed of printers' flowers and showed much ingenuity in their arrangement.
When
Henry Bynneman died in 1583, he appointed Denham and
Ralph Newbery to be his executors. Shortly after this it is thought that Denham started the
Eliot's Court Printing House.
Denham was an industrious printer and in 1583 was returned as having four presses; in 1586-7 and 1588-9 he served as Junior Warden of the Stationers' Company, but he never became Master. About 1585 he removed to
Aldersgate Street. The last entry under his name occurs in the Registers on 3 December 1589, after which nothing more is heard of him.
Richard Yardley and
Peter Short succeeded to the business.
Denham invented the
rhetorical question mark "⸮" in the 1580s, which did not become a permanent part of the language.
External links
*Patricia Brewerton
Denham, Henry(
fl.
''Floruit'' ( ; usually abbreviated fl. or occasionally flor.; from Latin for 'flourished') denotes a date or period during which a person was known to have been alive or active. In English, the unabbreviated word may also be used as a noun indic ...
1556–1590), ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 2004, accessed 11 Jan 2008
English printers
Year of birth missing
Year of death missing
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