{"id":"01KG6S5HREBSVPPTK7ESJG7QA1","cid":"bafkreifnong4w4ws6tj6qfadfo7v25wzkbsdarnfz4ddmegatv5cnj55f4","type":"section","properties":{"description":"# Character of his business.\n## Overview - What this is (type, form, dates, scope)\nThis is a section from the frontmatter of a digitized text, \"Shakespeare's Sonnets,\" focusing on the business practices of publisher Thomas Thorpe. It was extracted on January 30, 2026, as part of a structure extraction process. The section discusses Thorpe's role in procuring manuscripts and his limited involvement in the actual printing and selling of books.\n## Context - Background and provenance from related entities\nThis section is part of the [FACSIMILE OF THE EDITION OF 1609](arke:01KG6S4GWQC7KPJ59BAYCY3HXR) of Shakespeare's Sonnets, found within the larger [PDF Workflow Main Test 2026-01-30T00:26:53](arke:01KG6NWQ2H2K4PGG7H4ZHYCZ3Y) collection. The text was extracted from the file [pdf-01KG6Q7Q25RHMFT3SJXPV18VFF.txt](arke:01KG6S2X2EBB305ENM00G16GWA). It follows the section titled [His ownership of the manuscript of Marlowe’s Lucan.](arke:01KG6S5HRBCZ3T053G811SA6FS) and precedes the section titled [The printer](arke:01KG6S5HREJBCSAMRCKYTMG8ES).\n## Contents - What it contains, key subjects and details\nThe section details Thomas Thorpe's business model, which primarily involved acquiring manuscripts rather than printing or selling books directly. It mentions that Thorpe was associated with the publication of twenty-nine volumes, including Marlowe’s *Lucan*. The text notes that Thorpe briefly had a shop called the Tiger’s Head in St. Paul’s Churchyard in 1608. It also identifies George Eld as the printer and John Wright and William Aspley as the booksellers involved in the publication of the first edition of Shakespeare’s sonnets. The section further discusses Thorpe's method of acquiring \"copy,\" often through irregular means, and his lack of permanent establishment with his own press or bookstore.","description_generated_at":"2026-01-30T06:26:12.276Z","description_model":"gemini-2.5-flash-lite","description_title":"Character of his business.","end_line":9287,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T06:24:08.806Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Character of his business.","source_file":"01KG6S2X2EBB305ENM00G16GWA","start_line":9274,"text":"Character of his business.\n\nThorpe was associated with the publication of twenty-nine volumes in all, including Marlowe’s Lucan; but in almost all his operations his personal energies were confined, as in his initial enterprise, to procuring the manuscript. For a short period in 1608 he occupied a shop, the Tiger’s Head, in St. Paul’s Churchyard, and the fact was duly announced on the title-pages of three publications which he issued in that year. But his other undertakings were described on their\n\n<!-- [Page 442](arke:01KG6QHPHHEYFZG45GSQ0GY2SM) -->\n31\n# SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE\n\ntitle-pages as printed for him by one stationer and sold for him by another, and when any address found mention at all, it was the shopkeeper’s address, and not his own. He merely traded in the ‘copy’, which he procured how he could—in a few cases by purchase from the author, but in more cases through the irregular acquisition of a ‘private’ transcript of a work that was circulating at large and was not under the author’s ‘protection’. He never enjoyed in permanence the profits or dignity of printing his ‘copy’ at a press of his own, or selling books on premises of his own. In this homeless fashion he pursued the well-understood profession of procurer of ‘dispersed transcripts’ for a longer period than any other known member of the Stationers’ Company.\n\nBesides Thorpe, there were actively engaged in the publication of the first edition of Shakespeare’s sonnets the printer George Eld and two booksellers, John Wright and William Aspley, who undertook the sale of the impression. The booksellers arranged that one-half of the copies should bear one of their names in the imprint, and the other half should bear the other’s name. The even distribution of the two names on the extant copies suggests that the edition was precisely halved between the two. The practice was not uncommon. In 1606 the bookseller Blount acquired the MS. of the long unpublished *A Discourse of Civill Life*, by Lodowick\n\n1 Very few of his wares does Thorpe appear to have procured direct from the authors. It is true that between 1607 and 1611 there were issued under his auspices some eight volumes of genuinely literary value, including, besides Shakespeare’s sonnets, three plays by Chapman (of which the text is very bad), four works of Ben Jonson (which his old friend Blount seems to have procured for him), and Coryat’s *Odcombian Banquet*, a piratical excerpt from Coryat’s *Crudities*. Blount acquired the copyright of Ben Jonson’s *Sejanus* on November 2, 1604, and assigned it to Thorpe on August 6, 1607. Thorpe did not retain the property long. He transferred his right in *Sejanus*, as well as in Jonson’s *Volpone*, to Walter Burre on October 3, 1610.\n","title":"Character of his business."},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG6S4GWQC7KPJ59BAYCY3HXR","peer_type":"frontmatter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG6S2X2EBB305ENM00G16GWA","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG6NWQ2H2K4PGG7H4ZHYCZ3Y","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG6S5HRBCZ3T053G811SA6FS","peer_type":"section","predicate":"prev"},{"peer":"01KG6S5HREJBCSAMRCKYTMG8ES","peer_type":"section","predicate":"next"}],"ver":3,"created_at":"2026-01-30T06:24:08.974Z","ts":"2026-01-30T06:26:12.474Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF5C36SQEVDHC9CBNZZJH9K"}}