ISAIAH THOMAS

Isaiah Thomas (b. Boston, Mass., 19 Jan. 1749; d. Worcester, Mass., 4 April 1831) was a printer, publisher, and scholar. He settled in Worcester in 1778 and became the leading American publisher of his time, with more than four hundred titles coming from his press. Importing a font of movable music type from England, Thomas in 1786 entered the sacred music business, bringing out The Worcester Collection of Sacred Harmony, which he printed typographically. The work gave no author on its title-page in its first five editions; but Thomas, admitting in the first that he was 'unskilled in musick,' recruited knowledgeable musicians to help him, and he signed the prefaces of these editions himself. Between 1789 and his retirement in 1802, Thomas published or printed more sacred collections than any other American, most of them through his Boston partnership of Thomas and Andrews. The Isaiah Thomas Papers, including letters and business documents, are owned by the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester.

          Amerigrove, Bio-bib, DAB, Grove. Also Crawford 1983, p. 193-95, 215-22; Kroeger 1976a; Kroeger 1976b; Shipton 1948.

          See No. 533ff.

ASMI p. 580.