John Sewell
Contributions
- Historical remarks on the castle of the Bastille, with curious and entertaining anecdotes of that fortress, &c. &c. From the French. The second edition, considerably enlarged translation has paratext has other edition publisher
Knows
- Thomas Cadell bookseller civil servant publisher
- John Debrett bookseller publisher
- James Edwards bookseller entrepreneur
- Thomas Evans bookseller publisher
- Henry Lasher Gardner bookseller publisher
- Thomas Hood bookseller publisher
- James Perry actor civil servant entrepreneur journalist pamphleteer
- George Robinson bookseller publisher
- Ann Vernor bookseller publisher
Notes
Based at 32 Cornhill.
Apprenticed to John Brotherton whom he succeeded in 1775. Also worked as a bookbinder and print dealer. Succeeded by James Asperne.
From 1782-1808, he published the European Magazine, a monthly journal with eighty-nine biannual volumes published between 1782 and 1826. Launched as the European Magazine, and London Review in January 1782, it promised to offer "the Literature, History, Politics, Arts, Manners, and Amusements of the Age", and was in direct competition with The Gentleman's Magazine. It was absorbed into the Monthly Magazine in 1826. Soon after its launch, the founding editor James Perry passed ownership to the Shakespearean scholar Isaac Reed and his partners John Sewell and Daniel Braithwaite, who guided the magazine during its first two decades. Contributions in the magazine appeared over initials or pseudonyms and have largely remained anonymous. Scholars believe that these include the first published poem by William Wordsworth as Axiologos, a sonnet addressed to Helen Maria Williams (1787).