Born at Southwater, Sussex, Lintot was apprenticed to a bookseller in 1690 and was not officially freed of his contract until 1700, but he began selling books independently at the sign of the Cross Keys in St. Martin's Lane before that, and six plays appeared with his imprint in 1698.
In 1705, he moved his shop again, to its most permanent location, at the Cross Keys on Fleet Street, next to Nando's Coffee House and right by Temple Bar.
From 1705 to 1712, he published all the plays put on at Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, and he was one of the leading publishers of literary authors, including the dramas of George Farquhar, John Dryden, William Congreve, Richard Steele, Susanna Centlivre, and Colley Cibber.
He also increased the pay that he gave to authors who had proven successful and occasionally speculated on contemporary furores.
He paid, for example, £105 to Colley Cibber for The Nonjuror and over £100 to John Gay for Poems on Several Occasions (after offering only £35 for Trivia).
Tonson, for his part, went ahead and advertised the new Shakespeare edition by Pope, and this infuriated Lintot, who complained in print.
In the Narrative of Dr. Norris, Lintot is satirised lightly, and in the Full and True Account of the "poisoning" of Edmund Curll he is struck a bit more directly.