Mary Lewis (1703-91) and her husband, John Lewis (1697-1755), operated a printing and bookselling establishment in Bartholomew Close from 1731 to 1749 and then at 1 Paternoster Row, from 1749 to 1755, leaving a significant mark during those years as printer and distributor of materials related to the evangelical revival and religious dissent, all from within her own ardent faith as first a follower of George Whitefield and then of John Cennick and the Moravians.  Upon her husband’s death in 1755, Mary Lewis assumed control of the business, assisted by her eldest daughter, Catherine (1727-67); her youngest daughter, Martha (1745-1828); and several apprentices, including William Immyns (1736-?) and Henry Trapp (1740-91), eventual husbands to Catherine and Martha. Upon her retirement in 1776, Mary Lewis turned her business over to Henry and Martha Trapp.  After Henry Trapp’s death in 1791, Martha Lewis Trapp (later Priestley) continued to appear on imprints from 1 Paternoster Row into 1797. The previous year she had relinquished control of the family business to her son-in-law, Vaughan Griffiths (d. 1832), who remained a printer, seller, and proprietor at those same premises through 1812, bringing to a close more than a half-century of one family’s commanding presence as dissenting printers and booksellers at the entrance to the most iconic street in eighteenth-century London’s book trade. She did not appear on an imprint under her own name, however, until 1755, the year of her husband’s death. The following year, she printed or sold 39 imprints, about 31% of the total number of imprints produced by her husband during his entire career.  Of these imprints, 32 were works by Cennick, whose writings would be the exclusive publishing domain of Mary Lewis and her successors for the next four decades, an achievement justifying her distinction, noted by Plomer, as “Printer to the Moravians.” Mary Lewis first began attending the Moravian congregation in Fetter Lane, London, along with her daughter, Catherine, in 1743; she applied for membership in 1745, but was not formally admitted until April 11, 1748, confirmed on January 22, 1749, and allowed communion on February 19, 1749.  By 1762, Mary Lewis had transformed a narrowly-focused religious print-shop into a vibrant and cohesive publishing enterprise, employing four apprentices as her two daughters, Catherine and Martha. Together, these women created an imposing female presence at 1 Paternoster Row that would continue unabated for another three and a half decades. Mary Lewis was interred at the Moravian burial ground in Chelsea on September 20, 1791.

Mary Lewis appeared on 338 imprints from 1 Paternoster Row between 1755 and 1776, of which some 225 imprints were printed and sold exclusively on her own, selling many of them in the vestries of some twenty Moravian and dissenting chapels, a total exceeding that of any other dissenting printer/bookseller in London during the last half of the eighteenth century, an indication of both her widespread connections within dissenting culture and her own deeply-held evangelical interests. She was the sole printer and seller for all of Cennick’s works and editions (109 imprints, 46 titles) as well as works by James Relly (seven imprints), Charles Bradbury (six imprints), and John Gambold, one of the Moravian ministers at Fetter Lane (two imprints).  She was also the main printer for William Mason (an early editor of the Gospel Magazine) (27 imprints, 15 titles), Thomas Jones (like Mason, an evangelical Anglican) (six imprints), and Joseph Hart (five editions of his popular Hymns, composed on Various Subjects).   In total, she printed or sold works by more than fifty dissenting and evangelical Anglican ministers and writers, another total that placed her among the leaders within London’s dissenting book trade, especially among printers and sellers aligned with evangelical Calvinism.

Many of her doctrinal and devotional interests were shared by other evangelical and dissenting printers and booksellers, including the Baptist printing/bookselling duo of Joseph Gurney (1744-1815) and his sister, Martha (1733-1816). Joseph worked with Lewis on several publications in the 1760s and ’70s, most noticeably the popular Gospel Magazine. It is also probable that either he or Lewis instructed Martha Gurney in the printing and bookselling trade (she was never formally apprenticed).  Martha Gurney began her career in 1772, just a few years before Lewis’s retirement. Lewis and Gurney rarely appeared in any of the London Directories during their careers, and their use of initials on their imprints (“M. Lewis” and “M. Gurney”) furthered their obscurity as women printers and booksellers. Lewis appeared on 34 imprints with the Particular Baptist bookseller George Keith, son-in-law of John Gill (1797-1771), prominent Baptist minister at Carter Lane, Southwark; 29 imprints with the Dillys (Edward and his younger brother Charles, the former a member of the Independent congregation in New Broad Street); 24 imprints with the Calvinistic Methodist James Mathews; 12 imprints with James Buckland, another Independent printer/bookseller in Paternoster Row; nine imprints with John Robinson, a Southwark Particular Baptist and member at Gill’s congregation in Carter Lane; nine imprints with Joseph Johnson who, like Keith (his master during his time as an apprentice in London) and Robinson, was raised a Particular Baptist before departing from his Calvinistic roots and embracing Unitarianism in the 1770s. Besides Martha Gurney, Mary Lewis regularly worked with other women booksellers and actively supported women authors who needed publishers for their writings, such as Mary Withers, at Seven Stars, Fleet Street; Elizabeth Dodd, at The Bible, West Street, just to the south of Seven Dials; Rachel Potter of Cannon Street; a Mrs. Winbush of Charing Cross; a Mrs. Englefield (location unknown); the Baptist poet Mary Bayly; and Dorcas Master, who wrote an account of a dispute among the members of a dissenting congregation in Redcross Street in 1758. References to Lewis can be found at that Moravian Archives, Moravian Church House, Muswell Hill, London; Plomer, Dictionaries, 155; McKenzie, Stationer's Company Apprentices, 214-15; and a forthcoming article by Timothy Whelan, "Mary Lewis and her Family of Printers and Booksellers, 1 Paternoster Row 1749-1812" in Publishing History. Work on Lewis is also being undertaken by Alison McNaught.

For accounts of two other Lewis families involved in the printing trades in the eighteenth century, also with dissenting connections, see The Lewises of Bristol and The Lewises of Worcester.