John Stockdale

John Stockdale (25 March 1750[1] – 21 June 1814[2]) was an English publisher whose London shop became a salon for the political classes and who had to face two actions for defamation.

[6] He was an industrious publisher and among the many works that he published were:[2] He also issued the London Courant newspaper,[3] Debates in Parliament (1784–90), an edition of Robinson Crusoe and John Aikin's A Description of the Country from Thirty to Forty Miles round Manchester (1795), originally intended to be merely an account of the neighbourhood of Mottram-in-Longdendale, with which Stockdale had personal acquaintance,[2] as well as various geographic maps and plans.

[8] Erskine contended that the defendant was not to be judged by isolated passages, selected and put together in the accusation, but by the entire context of the publication and its general character and objects.

3. c. 60), which established that nobody was to be punished for a few unguarded expressions, and left the construction of an alleged libeller's general purpose and animus in writing to a jury.

Early in his enterprise he had acquired considerable property, but afterwards he was less successful and the circumstance of having to make an arrangement with his creditors is said to have caused him some anxiety and accelerated his death.