Stephen Jones (editor)


Stephen Jones was an English literary editor, best known for his revision of the Biographia Dramatica.

Life

Eldest son of Giles Jones, secretary to the York Buildings Water Company, and nephew of Griffith Jones, he was born in London in 1763, and admitted to St Paul's School, London on 24 April 1775. He was first placed under a sculptor, but afterwards apprenticed to a printer in Fetter Lane. On the expiration of his indentures he became a corrector for the press.
He was employed by William Strahan for four years, and afterwards by Thomas Wright in Peterborough Court. On Wright's death, in March 1797, he undertook the editorship of the Whitehall Evening Post; with the decline of that journal he was appointed to the management, and became part proprietor, of the General Evening Post; which also declined in circulation, and was ultimately merged in the St. James's Chronicle. From 1797 to 1814 he compiled from the newspapers and other periodicals an amusing annual volume entitled ‘The Spirit of the Public Journals,’ of which a new series, with illustrations by George Cruikshank, appeared in 1823–5.
On the death of Isaac Reed, in 1807, he became editor of the European Magazine; a committed freemason, for some years he ran the Freemasons' Magazine. In the end he had little literary employment. He died in Upper King Street, now Southampton Row, Holborn, on 20 Dec. 1827. He married his first cousin, Christian, daughter of his uncle Griffith Jones.

Works

His main publications are: