CLOWES, WILLIAM, printer, was born at Chichester, January 1, 1779 ; died January 26, 1847. The father of Mr. Clowes was educated at Oxford, and kept a large school at Chichester ; but he died when the subject of this notice was an infant, leaving his widow to support two children with straitened means. She was enabled, by keeping a small school, to give her son a business education; and he was appren ticed to Mr. Seagrove, a printer at Chichester. He came to London in 1802, and worked is a compositor with Mr. Teape, of Tower Hill. In 1803 he commenced business on his own account in Villiers-street, Strand, on a capital of 3501. He purchased one press ; engaged one assistant ; and, after working as a compositor through the day, would often, for two or three consecutive nights, toil at press, to have his small stock of type free for the next day's demand. It was this energy of character that raised Mr. Clowes to his subsequent eminence. Fortune favoured his exertions. He married, when ho was at the age of twenty-four, a cousin of Mr. Winchester, a stationer, who had much government business ; and by him he was recommended for important official work. His punctual industry and obliging and kindly disposi tion brought friends around him; and in a few years the humble beginner with one press had a considerable printing-office in Northum berland Court. This office was burnt down ; but a larger roan in its place. In 1823 he commenced steam-printing. He had two or three machines in a dark cellar ; and, the process being novel, his office had many visitors of literary reputation. Mr. Clowes was always a signal example of the honest ardour of manufacturing enterprise to lead the way under new circumstances. He saw that newspapers were printed by steam ; and he estimated the possibility that books might be demanded in sufficiently large numbers to make the new invention of more universal application than was at first considered probable. Au action brought by the Duke of Northumberland, whose palace was close to Mr. Clowes'e printing-office, to abate the steam-press as a
nuisance, was successfully defended ; but the printer removed his noise and his dirt, under the award of arbitrators; and the decision was a fortunate one for him. In 1828 he becamo the occupier of the spacious and well-known premises in Duke-street, Stamford-street. In the course of years the humble establishment of the young Sussex compositor grew into 24 steam-presses and 28 hand-presses, giving employ to 600 persons, in the largest, most complete, and well-organised printing manufactory that had ever existed in the world. The creation of a literature that should at once reconcile the apparently dissimilar qualities of goodness and cheapness, through a demand for books before unprecedented, gave a considerable impulse to the energies of Mr. Clowes. 'The Penny Magazine' and 'The Penny Cyclopredia' issued with undeviating regularity for fourteen years from his priuting-office. Mr. Clowes was not a common man. His powers of arrangement were most acute ; he was at once bold and prudent. lie was one of those few men who would not recognise the word 'impossible' as one to be Lightly employed. lie who In 1S03 had a few hundred weight of type to be worked from day to day like a beaker's gold, would not hesitate, In the height of his prosperous Career, to have tons of type locked up for months in some ponderous bluebook. To print an Official Report of a hundred folio pages in a day or night, or of a thousand pages in a week, was no uncommon occurrence. Mr. Clowes's name will not be associated with the honours of the great classical printers; his was another ambition. He lived in an age when knowledge was to become the inheritance of the many ; and he furnished the means of carrying out this literary revolution in a more efficient manner than any of his professional competitors. His name will be permanently associated with the lutellktual development of our time. (National (yclopadia.)