William Barley
William Barley was an English bookseller and publisher. He was involved in a long-running dispute with the Stationers’ Company. He published Anthony Holborne’s Pavans, Galliards, Almains, the first work of music for instruments rather than voices to be printed in England. Evidence suggests he may have been born in Warwickshire.
About William Barley in brief
William Barley was an English bookseller and publisher. He was involved in a long-running dispute with the Stationers’ Company. Barley’s role in Elizabethan music publishing has proved to be a contentious issue. His contemporaries harshly criticised the quality of two of the first works of music that he published, but he was also influential in his field. He published Anthony Holborne’s Pavans, Galliards, Almains, the first work of music for instruments rather than voices to be printed in England. In a deposition of 1598, Barley refers to his age as “xxxiii yeeres or thereabowt”, placing his date of birth around 1565. Evidence suggests that Barley may have been born in Warwickshire. He trained as a bookseller under Yarath James, a small-time publisher, in the 1580s. By 1592, he had opened his own shop in the parish of St Peter upon Cornhill, whose register recorded his marriage to a Mary Harper on 15 June 1603 and christenings and burials of people associated with his family. He conducted business out of this shop for the next twenty years. From 1591 to 1604, he was associated with at least 57 works, but the exact nature of his involvement is, at times, hard to identify.
Some works were printed for him, others were sold by him, and two state that they were printed by him. Whether he actually retained the rights to some of the works remains unclear. Whether Barley acted as a publisher or merely acted as an enterer for the enterers, or in private agreements with them, is also a matter of debate. He is probably the same William Barley who opened a branch office in Oxford. This action brought him into conflict with the authorities. He ran afoul of London authorities as well. In September 1591, a warrant was issued for his arrest, although the charge is unknown. During The True Tragedy of London and England for Richard. III. With Creede, he involved in the publication of A Looking Glass for England and England. During this period, he entered none of these works in the stationers’ Register. This is probably due to the feud with the Drapers’ Draper’s’ Company and the Stationer’s Company viewed the ability of non-members to enter works into the register as a special privilege. Thus, others, such as Thomas Creede and Abel Jeffes, Jeffes and John Danter, entered these titles.
You want to know more about William Barley?
This page is based on the article William Barley published in Wikipedia (as of Oct. 31, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
