BLOUNT or BLUNT, EDWARD (born 1565 ?), the printer, in conjunction with Isaac Jaggard, of Mr. William Shake speares Comedies, Histories and Tragedies. Published according to the true Originall Copies (1623), usually known as the first folio of Shakespeare. It was produced under the direction of John Heming (died 1630) and Henry Condell (died 1627), both of whom had been Shakespeare's colleagues at the Globe theatre, but as Blount combined the functions of printer and editor on other occasions, it is fair to conjecture that he to some extent edited the first folio.
Register states that he was the son of Ralph Blount or Blunt, merchant tailor of London, and apprenticed him self in 1578 for ten years to William Ponsonby. He became a freeman of the Stationers' Company in 1588. Among the most important of his publications are Giovanni Florio's Italian-English dictionary and his translation of Montaigne, Marlowe's Hero and Leander, and the Sixe Court Comedies of John Lyly. He wrote a preface to Hero and Leander, in which he defended the dead poet's reputation. He himself translated Ars Aulica, or the Cour tier's Arte (1607) from the Italian of Lorenzo Ducci, and Chris tian Policie (163 2) from the Spanish of Juan de Santa Maria. From 1609 he was for a time in partnership with William Barret, and published in 1612 Shelton's translation of Don Quixote.
