William Ponsonby

William Ponsonby (1546? – 1604) was a prominent London publisher of the Elizabethan era. Active in the 1577–1603 period, Ponsonby published the works of Edmund Spenser, Sir Philip Sidney, and other members of the Sidney circle; he has been called "the leading literary publisher of Elizabethan times." Ponsonby completed his apprenticeship under stationer William Norton on 11 January 1571. Around 1576 he established his own bookshop at the sign of the Bishop's Head in St. Paul's Churchyard. Ponsonby's relationship with the works of Spenser began when he issued the 1590 volume of The Faerie Queene, Books 1–3. Ponsonby published all of Spenser's future works, including the complete edition of The Faerie Queene in 1596; he issued the entire Spenserian canon except for the poet's earliest volume, The Shepherd's Calendar (1579). In regard to Sidney, Ponsonby issued both the 1590 and 1593 editions of the Arcadia, the 1595 edition of The Defence of Poesie and the large 1598 folio collection that included Astrophil and Stella. The works of Sidney's sister Mary, Countess of Pembroke, including Antony (1592, 1595), her translation of Garnier's tragedy, were also published by Ponsonby.