Henry Trapp

Henry Trapp (1740-91) was a Moravian printer and bookseller at 1 Paternoster Row, from 1766-91.  He was the son of Michael Trapp of Margate, parish clerk. He was apprenticed by Mary Lewis in 1759 and joined the free Stationers Co. in 1768.  A John Trapp, possibly his son, apparently worked with him in 1784 (see Maxted, p. 228). Despite his systemic failures as a husband, managed to appear on 128 imprints from 1 Paternoster Row between 1776 and 1789 (the same output as his father-in-law), serving as sole printer and seller on 84 of those imprints. By 1789 his alcoholism had returned, severely limiting his ability to engage in productive work. How much of his total output during his thirteen years as a printer and seller was dependent upon his wife’s labors and expertise will never be known, but she was clearly an essential part of the business during their marriage.  Of Henry Trapp’s imprints, 36 are editions of works by John Cennick, mostly reprints of editions first published by Mary Lewis and printed and sold exclusively by Trapp. Besides Cennick, Trapp’s main writers were such prominent evangelical and dissenting figures as C. E. De Coetlogon (6 imprints), J. Wakelin (six imprints), George Burder (five imprints), the seventeenth-century nonconformist John Bunyan (five imprints), William Mason (five imprints as writer or editor), Joseph Hart (three editions of his Hymns), and two imprints each of works by Ambrose Serle, John Newton, Samuel James, William Romaine, James Thwaites, and Elhanan Winchester. Others writers of note who were printed or sold by Trapp include the Baptist poet and polemicist Maria de Fleury (1752/53-92), the American Congregationalist Jonathan Edwards, the Moravian William Hammond, the Methodist Rowland Hill, and two Independent ministers, John Towers and John Townsend. When he was not appearing on imprints as sole printer or seller, Trapp collaborated with some forty other sellers, the vast majority being dissenters. Among these were James Mathews (11 imprints), James Buckland (ten), Thomas Vallance (seven), George Keith (five), Edward and Charles Dilly (five), and Joseph Johnson (four). Other evangelical and dissenting sellers include William Ash, John Brown, James Buckland, William Button, Martha Gurney, John Marsom, William Otridge, John Parsons, Thomas Pitcher, Thomas Scollick, Robert Thomson, and Benjamin Tomkins.