Edward and Charles Dilly

Edward Dilly (1732-1807) and his younger brother, Charles Dilly (1739-1807), were publishers and booksellers in London between 1755 and 1801. They came from Bedfordshire and were of Presbyterian background. Edward joined the Independent congregation in New Broad Street on 28 November 1754,  not long after the death of John Oswald, another member of the congregation under whom Edward had worked (New Broad Street Church Book, 1727-1811, f. 95, London Metropolitan  Archives, NC/32/1). Charles never joined, though most likely he was a regular attendant as a "hearer" only. The Dillys published and/or sold many of the Dissenting ministers of the 17th and 18th centuries, as well as Stephen Doddridge (Independent), John Collett Ryland, and John Ash of Pershore, both Baptist ministers and educators, as well as several texts by the American divine, Jonathan Edwards. Their establishment at 22 Poultry Street was a popular retreat for some of London’s leading literary figures, including Catherine Macaulay, Samuel Johnson, and James Boswell. It was one of the Dilly’s that William Steele sought out in 1777 as the possible publisher for Anne Steele’s Poems and Mary Steele’s Danebury.  According to John Nichols, Charles Dilly was offered the position of Sheriff of London in 1782, but he declined it ‘on the plea of Nonconformity’. See John Nichols, Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, 9 vols. (London: Nichols, 1812-16), 3.190-93.