Ann Bryan

Ann Bryan (fl. 1783-1801), who operated from 51-52 Corn Street between 1783 and 1801 (she appears to have succeeded Mary Ward and her son from that same location, whose last imprint appeared in 1777), publishing titles by Baptist ministers in and around Bristol as well as Circular Letters of the Western Baptist Association. Her business was not far from that of another Baptist bookseller, Joseph Cottle (1770-1853), at 49 High Street. Cottle is best known for his friendships with Southey, Coleridge, Wordsworth, and other early Romantic figures and his publications of some of their works, including the first imprints of Lyrical Ballads (1798). Since the Bryans do not appear among the church records of the Baptist congregation at Broadmead, they would have attended the Baptist congregation that met in the Pithay, the same congregation to which the family of Joseph Cottle belonged until 1801, when he retired from business and moved his membership, along with the other members of his family, to the Broadmead congregation.

Ann Bryan was succeeded by her son and daughter-in-law, Edward and Mary Bryan. In 1801, Francis Harris (1758-1823), the son of son of John Harris (1745-1801), a deacon at the Baptist congregation at Broadmead and a prominent civic leader in Bristol, partnered with Bryan from the 52 Corn Street location. Between 1801 and 1808 they appeared on 17 imprints (partnerships between members of the same dissenting denomination was the norm at this time), with many titles pertaining to works written by and about Baptists in the West Country. After 1808, Bryan continued as a printer and seller at 52 Corn Street, with Harris operating primarily as a stationer at another location in Corn Street (see Holden’s Directory for Bristol for 1811). After they ended their partnership, Harris appeared on only four more imprints through 1813, selling at times with Bryan, as well as William Browne (most likely a dissenter), Isaac James (Harris’s fellow attendant at Broadmead), and William Button, James’s brother-in-law and the Particular Baptist minister at Dean Street, London, and a prominent printer and bookseller at 24 Paternoster Row. Between 1808 and his death in 1814, Edward Bryan printed or sold another 15 titles, working most likely with his wife, Mary, who would succeed him with the family business. About half of Bryan’s imprints were sermons by Baptist ministers, including Broadmead’s well-known pastor, John Ryland, Jr., and accounts of the Education Society for Bristol Baptist College, and a sermon preached before the Western Association of Particular Baptists at Lyme in 1813. Bryan and his wife were also actively involved in the formation of the Prudent Man’s Friend Society, printing in 1812 the original proposal for the society as well as Susannah Morgan’s Hints towards the Formation of a Society for Promoting a Spirit of Independence among the Poor and the Rules, orders, and regulations of the Prudent Man's Friendly Societies in 1813.