The family shortly moved to Ireland, when John Dunton senior became chaplain to Sir Henry Ingoldsby.
[1] At the age of fifteen John the son was apprenticed to Thomas Parkhurst, bookseller, at the sign of the Bible and Three Crowns, Cheapside, London.
[2] He had early success with Thomas Doolittle's The Lord's last-sufferings, the topical Stephen Jay's Daniel in the Den, and a sermon by John Shower.
[3] In 1686, probably because he was concerned in the Monmouth Rebellion, he visited New England, where he stayed eight months selling books and observing with interest the new country and its inhabitants.
His wife died in 1697, and he married a second time; but a quarrel about property led to a separation; and being incapable of managing his own affairs, he spent the last years of his life in great poverty.
He was impressed by their learning: in particular, he thought that Sir Henry Echlin was one of the great book lovers of his time, owning a "very large and curious library".
He wrote several books whose titles are today among specialists better known than their contents, ranging from The informer's doom, or, An unseasonable letter from Utopia directed to the man in the moon giving a full and pleasant account of the arraignment, tryal, and condemnation of all those grand and bitter enemies that disturb and molest all kingdoms and states throughout the Christian world (1689) to his Bumography: or, A touch at the lady's tails, being a lampoon (privately) dispers'd at Tunbridge-Wells, in the year 1707.
followed by the public proclamation of his reunion with his wife, while at the same moment he would portray himself as a lover of privacy with his The art of living incognito being a thousand letters on as many uncommon subjects, written by John Dunton during his retreat from the world, and sent to that honourable lady to whom he address'd his conversation in Ireland (1700).