William Bradbury (printer)

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William Bradbury (13 April 1799 – 11 April 1869) was an English printer and publisher. He became a partner in Bradbury and Evans in 1830, a firm that printed works by famous novelists like Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray, and published the magazine Punch.

Bradbury was born in Bakewell, Derbyshire, and baptized on 14 April 1799. He trained as a compositor in Lincoln and started his own printing business there in 1821. He later partnered with his brother-in-law William Dent from 1822 to 1830. Bradbury married Sarah Price in 1826, and they had five children, including Henry Riley Bradbury and William Hardwick Bradbury.

In 1824 Bradbury and Dent moved their business to London, eventually becoming Bradbury, Dent & Manning. The partnership was dissolved in 1830, and Bradbury formed a new partnership with Frederick Mullett Evans. They installed a large steam-powered printing press in 1833 and began publishing in 1841, after acquiring the satirical magazine Punch. Bradbury and Evans also helped found The Gardeners’ Chronicle in 1841.

Bradbury and Evans printed works for major publishers and printed Dickens’s serials, including The Pickwick Papers (1836–37) and Nicholas Nickleby (1838–39). They became Dickens’s publishers from 1844 to 1859, and in 1847 they published Thackeray’s Vanity Fair. The firm’s offices were in London on Fleet Street and other nearby streets.

In 1859 Bradbury and Evans split with Dickens over an advertisement in Punch, after which Dickens moved to Chapman & Hall. The firm then launched the illustrated weekly Once a Week in opposition to Dickens’s All the Year Round. Bradbury remained a central figure in their business and in their social circle, including attracting the staff and friends of Punch to gatherings.

Bradbury’s later years were marked by illness and personal tragedy, including the suicide of his son Henry in 1860. He retired with Evans in 1865, and his son William Hardwick Bradbury helped continue the business as Bradbury, Evans & Co. William Bradbury died in 1869 and was buried at Highgate Cemetery.