‘Honest George’: George Thomason and London during the Civil War and Revolution

Abstract

Part of the fascination with Thomason is that he was more than merely a prominent bookseller who collected a vast collection of civil war pamphlets and newspapers. He was also an active participant in public life, in terms of the workings of the Stationers’ Company and in terms of political and religious machinations in London. This chapter utilizes a wide range of contemporary sources, including material from the Thomason Tracts, to trace his involvement in the political and religious affairs of the civil wars, down to the establishment of the republic in 1649. It reveals him to have been a zealous and highly partisan member of both his guild and the civic community, and this not only helps to contextualize his massive collection of contemporary printed material, but also to highlight how print became central to the ways in which he and others participated in the civil wars.

Keywords

• thomason tracts
• george thomason