He is believed to have been related to Major Richard Tonson, who obtained a grant of land in county Cork from Charles II, and whose descendants became Barons Riversdale.

Having been admitted a freeman of the Company of Stationers on 20 December 1677, he began business on his own account, following his brother Richard, who had commenced in 1676, and had published, among other things, Thomas Otway's Don Carlos, Prince of Spain.

It has been said that when Tonson bought the rights to Troilus and Cressida (1679), the first play of John Dryden's that he published, he was obliged to borrow the purchase money (£20) from Abel Swalle, another bookseller.

During the ensuing year Tonson continued to bring out pieces by Dryden, and on 6 October 1691 paid thirty guineas for all the author's rights in the printing of the tragedy of Cleomenes.

Serious financial differences arose between the poet and his publisher, and Dryden's letters to Tonson (1695–1697) are full of complaints of meanness and sharp practice and of refusals to accept clipped or bad money.

Dryden described Tonson thus, in lines written under his portrait, and afterwards printed in Faction Displayed (1705): With leering looks, bull-faced, and freckled fair; With two left legs, and Judas-coloured hair, And frowzy pores, that taint the ambient air.

In connection with Jeremy Collier's attack on the stage, the Middlesex justices presented the playhouses in May 1698, and also William Congreve for writing the Double Dealer, Thomas d'Urfey for Don Quixote, and Tonson and Brisco, booksellers, for printing them.

Before the end of the century Tonson had moved from the Judge's Head to a shop in Gray's Inn Gate, probably the one previously occupied by his brother Richard.

The meetings were first held at a mutton-pie shop in Shire Lane, kept by Christopher Cat, and may have begun with suppers given by Tonson to his literary friends.

In a poem on the club, attributed to Sir Richard Blackmore, we find: One night in seven at this convenient seat Indulgent Bocaj [Jacob] did the Muses treat.

Tonson was satirised in several skits, and it was falsely alleged that he had been expelled by the club, or had withdrawn from the society in scorn of being their jest any longer.

In 1703 Tonson went to the Dutch Republic to obtain paper and engravings for the fine edition of Caesar's Commentaries, which was ultimately published under Samuel Clarke's care in 1712.

In the autumn of 1710 Tonson moved to the Shakespeare's Head, opposite Catherine Street in the Strand; his former shop at Gray's Inn Gate was announced for sale in the Tatler for 14 October (No.

Tonson published Addison's tragedy, Cato, in April 1713; and, according to a concocted letter of Pope's, the true reason why Steele brought the Guardian to an end in October was a quarrel with Tonson, its publisher; "he stood engaged to his bookseller in articles of penalty for all the Guardians, and by desisting two days, and altering the title of the paper to that of the Englishman, was quit of the obligation, those papers being printed by Buckley."

There are various reasons why this story is improbable; the truth seems to be that Steele was anxious to write on politics with a freer hand than was practicable in the Guardian.

Next year he paid fifty guineas for the copyright of Addison's comedy, The Drummer, and published Thomas Tickell's translation of the first book of the Iliad, which gave offence to Pope.

In one of several amusing letters from Vanbrugh, now at Bayfordbury, Tonson, who was then in Paris, was congratulated upon his luck in South Sea stock, and there is other evidence that he made a large sum in connection with Law's Mississippi scheme.

He had bought the Hazells estate at Ledbury, Herefordshire, and in 1721 he was sending presents of cider to the Dukes of Grafton and Newcastle, the latter of whom called Tonson "my dear old friend," and asked him to give him his company in Sussex.

He had to apply to the court of chancery for an injunction to stop Robert Tooke and others printing a pirated edition of the play; the sum paid for the copyright was £40.

Proposals were issued by Tonson in January 1729 for completing the subscription to the new edition of Rymer's Fœdera, in seventeen folio volumes (of which fifteen were then printed), at fifty guineas the set.

Pope was annoyed to find in 1731 that Tonson was to be one of the publishers of Lewis Theobald's proposed edition of Shakespeare, in which he feared an attack on his own editorial work, but he professed to be satisfied with the assurances he received.

Tonson died on 31 March 1767, without issue, in a house on the north side of the Strand, near Catherine Street, whither he had removed the business some years earlier.