FOULIS, ANDREW and ROBERT (1707 17 76), Scottish printers and publishers, were the sons of a Glas gow maltman. Robert was apprenticed to a barber; but his ability attracted the attention of Dr. Francis Hutcheson, who strongly recommended him to establish a printing press. He started busi ness in 1741 in Glasgow, and in 1743 was appointed printer to the university. In this same year he brought out Demetrius Phalereus de elocutione, in Greek and Latin, the first Greek book ever printed in Glasgow; and this was followed in 1774 by the famous I2mo edition of Horace which was long believed to be immacu late : though the successive sheets were exposed in the university and a reward offered for the discovery of any inaccuracy, six errors at least, according to T. F. Dibdin, escaped detection. Soon afterwards Robert went into partnership with Andrew, who had been educated for the church, and they continued for about thirty years to issue carefully corrected and beautifully printed editions of classical works in Latin, Greek, English, French and Italian. They printed more than five hundred separate publica tions, among them the small editions of Cicero, Tacitus, Corne lius Nepos, Virgil, Tibullus and Propertius, Lucretius and Juve nal; a beautiful edition of the Greek Testament, in small 4t0 ; Homer (4 vols. fol., 1756-58) ; Herodotus, Greek and Latin (9 vols. 12m0, 1761) ; Xenophon, Greek and Latin (12 vols. 12mo, 1762-67) ; Gray's poems; Pope's works; Milton's poems. The Homer, for which Flaxman's designs were executed, is perhaps the most famous production of the Foulis press. The brothers spared no pains, and Robert went to France to procure manu scripts of the classics, and to engage a skilled engraver and a copper-plate printer. Unfortunately it became their ambition to establish an institution for the encouragement of the fine arts. Their countrymen were not ripe for such an attempt, and the "Academy" involved the projectors in ruin. Andrew died on Sept. 18, 1775, and Robert on June 2, 1776. Robert was the author of a Catalogue of Paintings with Critical Remarks. The business was afterwards carried on under the same name by Robert's son Andrew.
See W. J. Duncan, Notices and Documents illustrative of the Literary History of Glasgow, printed for the Maitland Club (1831) , which inter alia contains a catalogue of the works printed at the Foulis press, and another of the pictures, statues and busts in plaster of Paris produced at the "Academy" in the University of Glasgow. See also J. Ferguson, The Brothers Foulis and early Glasgow Printing (1889) ; D. Murray, Robert and Andrew Foulis and the Glasgow Press (Glasgow, 1913) ; Letters of Robert Foulis (Glasgow, 1917) .