ABSTRACT
Ponsonby traded throughout his career at the Bishop’s Head, St Paul’s Churchyard, and entered his first book in the Stationers’ Register in 1577. During the early 1580s, he published two prose romances by Greene, but most of his other books were staunchly Protestant tracts which seem closely allied to the political interests of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. In 1586, he made the most important business contact of his career. The death of Sidney in October had stunned the whole nation and aroused the commercial instincts of several members of the Stationers’ Company. In November 1586, Ponsonby informed Sidney’s trusted friend Fulke Greville that an unnamed stationer was planning a pirated edition of the Old Arcadia. Greville describes the meeting: ‘one ponsonby a booke bynder in poles church yard, came to me, and told me that ther was one in hand to print, Sir philip sydneys old arcadia asking me yf it were done, with yor honors co[n]s[ent] or any other of his frends’ (Sidney ed 1962:530). In August 1588, Ponsonby was rewarded with a commission to publish the authorized version of 1590. Sidney’s friends and his sister, the Countess of Pembroke, continued to place their trust in him, and he became their recognized stationer. He published the 1593 Arcadia, the Countess’ own translations of Mornay and Garnier, the authorized Defence of Poetry (1595), and the first collected edition of Sidney’s works (1598). Ponsonby played an important role in suppressing various pirated editions of Sidney’s compositions and also published volumes dedicated to the Countess of Pembroke by Fraunce and Watson.
