Margaret Angus (c. 1750-1821) and Thomas Angus (1745-88) were one of the more successful provincial Baptist bookselling and publishing firms, a business joined with and continued by their sons Thomas Jr. (d. 1808) and George (1783-1829). The Anguses were from Newcastle and were relations of a more famous Angus among the British Baptists in the 19th century, Joseph Angus (1816-1902), Secretary of the BMS and President of Regent’s Park College, London. The Angus family attended the Baptist congregation at Tuthill Stairs, Newcastle, and were relations of another family, the Angases, who also worshiped in the same congregation. Located at Trinity Corner, on the east side of St Nicholas’s Churchyard, Thomas Angus’s firm became the leading publisher of chapbooks, slip songs, and schoolbooks in Newcastle, also printing the first Newcastle directory (1778), several anti-Catholic tracts (such as the Protestant Packet), and the Oeconomist (1798–99). Upon her husband’s death in 1788, Margaret Angus, assisted by her sons, assumed control of the business, thus serving as a provincial counterpart to Martha Gurney in London, both Baptist women booksellers and printers appearing on imprints primarily by their initials (‘M. Gurney’, ‘M. Angus & Son’) until their retirements c. 1811-12.  Thomas Angus established his business at Trinity Corner, on the east side of St. Nicholas’ Churchyard, 1774-1788.  According to C. J. Hunt, Angus was “founder of the firm which became one of the most important, if not the most important, producer of chapbooks in Newcastle.  Like his wife and sons after him, Thomas Angus concentrated on producing street literature – chapbooks and slip songs – together with many schoolbooks.  He also produced the first Newcastle directory (1778) and a number of Anti-Catholic tracts” (3).  

Margaret Angus took over the business upon her husband’s death (indications are she had been working with him since 1770) and continued on her own until 1800, when she began trading as “M. Angus & Son.”  Upon the death of Thomas Angus, Jr., in 1808, she continued under the same name, but the son was now George Angus, who had been working with his mother for some time already (Newcastle Courant, 3 Dec 1808).  The firm specialized in the production of chapbooks, slip songs, battledores and school books. On December 31, 1812, the partnership was dissolved, and the business was carried on by George alone (Newcastle Courant, Jan 9, 1813).  He was admitted Freeman of the Newcastle Stationers’ Company, July 13, 1813, and went bankrupt in 1825. According to Peter Wood, the Anguses were part of a significant group of printers involved in the sale of chapbooks, most of which were popular songs. Thomas Angus, Sr., and Mary Angus, under the firm of “Angus,” between 1774 and 1800 printed and sold 31 chapbooks containing 75 songs, as well as 99 broadside songs. Under “M. Angus & Son,” between 1801 and 1812, another 85 chapbooks were printed and sold, containing 147 songs, along with an additional 2 broadsides.  George Angus continued the work, printing and selling 26 more chapbooks between 1813 and 1825, containing 47 songs as well as 25 broadsides. The Anguses were the first Newcastle firm to specialize in this material. Their totals would be superseded by J. Marshall (1801-30), who published 138 chapbooks containing 595 songs, along with 174 broadsides; and W. and T. Fordyce (1837-41), who published 23 chapbooks containing 286 songs, along with 497 broadsides. As Wood notes, Margaret Angus and John Marshalls “were responsible for around two thirds of extant Newcastle chapbooks with known printers”  (71) between 1801 and 1830. The largest groups of these chapbooks were part of a collection titled A Garland of New Songs (some 155 appeared before 1813) and, from the Angus family, A Collection of New Songs.

See Richard Welford, “Early Newcastle Typography,” in Archaeolgia Aeliana, 3rd series, 3 (1907), 1-134; and F. M. Thomson, Newcastle Chapboks in Newcastle upon Tyne University Library, Newcastle University Library Publication, no. 5, 1969; C. J. Hunt, The Booktrade in Northumberland and Durham to 1860 [Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1975], p. 3; for an overview of the Angus’s chapbook production, see Peter Wood, “The Newcastle Song Books,” in Street Ballads in Nineteenth-Century Britain, Ireland, and North America: The Interface between Print and Oral Traditions, ed. David Atkinson and Steve Roud (London and New York: Routledge, 2014), 59-71; and Hannah Barker, “Women, work and the industrial revolution: female involvement in the English printing trades, c. 1700-1840,” in Gender in Eighteenth-Century England: Roles, Representation and Responsibilities, ed. Hannah Barker and Elaine Chalus (London and New York: Longman, 1997), 98. Other materials on the Anguses can be found in the John and Thomas Bell Collections of Newcastle booktrade ephemera, Newcastle Public Library and Newcastle University Library; Richard Welford Collection of materials concerning the Newcastle book trade, Newcastle Public Library.