Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Moseley, Humphrey
MOSELEY, HUMPHREY (d. 1661), bookseller, conjectured to be a son of Samuel Moseley, a Staffordshire man, who was a stationer in London (Arber, Transcripts, ii. 249, iii. 683), was admitted a freeman of the Stationers' Company in 1627 (ib. iii. 686), when he probably began business. He was 'clothed' of the same company on 28 Oct. 1633, and in July 1659 was chosen one of its wardens. The first entry of a book licensed to him in the 'Stationers' Register' is on 29 May 1630. He became the chief publisher of the 'finer literature' of his age (Masson, Milton, vi. 400). He published the first collected edition of Milton's 'Poems,' 1645, and prefixed an address to the reader, in which he said: 'It is the love I have to our own language that hath made me diligent to collect and set forth such pieces, both in prose and verse, as may renew the wonted honour and esteem of our English tongue.' He published also early editions of Howell, Waller, Crashaw, Denham, D'Avenant, Cartwright, Donne, Fanshawe, Henry Vaughan, and many other authors, as well as translations of Spanish and Italian novels and contemporary French romances. His shop was in St. Paul's Churchyard. He died on 31 Jan. 1660-1, and was buried in St. Gregory's Church. By his will he appointed his wife Anne and his only daughter Anne his executrices, and left bequests to his brothers Thomas and Charles Moseley and Richard Frampton, and 10l. for a bowl or cup for the Stationers' Company.
[Masson's Life of Milton, vi. 400; Arber's Transcripts of Stationers' Registers; Arber's List of London Booksellers, 1890; Smyth's Obituary (Camden Soc.), p. 53.]