He was born at Caludon or Calledon, Warwickshire, the son of a farmer, and was apprenticed to a Coventry printer and bookseller.
In 1789 he set up a small printing press in a garret off Fleet Street, London, with a loan obtained from the Caslon Type Foundry, and, by 1797, his business had so increased that he was enabled to move into larger premises.
[1] An edition of Gray's Poems, printed by him in 1799, secured him the patronage of all the leading publishers.
Whittingham inaugurated the idea of printing cheap, handy editions of standard authors, and, on the bookselling trade threatening not to sell his productions, took a room at a coffee house and sold them by auction himself.
[1] His nephew Charles Whittingham (1795–1876), who from 1824 to 1828 had been in partnership with his uncle, in 1838 assumed control of the business.