Richard Phillips (publisher)

[3] Phillips built up a prominent fortune based on the speculative commission of newly revised textbooks and their publication, in a competitive market that had been freed by the House of Lords' decision in 1777 to strike down the perpetual copyright asserted by a small group of London booksellers to standard introductory works.

Angela Esterhammer has suggested that the character Masano, an irascible Italian printer in Galt's Andrew of Padua, the Improvisatore (1820), is based on Phillips.

[7] Phillips overextended himself and was declared bankrupt in the Bank Panic; he died in Brighton on 2 April 1840,[1] and is buried in the western extension of St Nicholas Churchyard.

[11] Phillips was the author, under his own name, of On the Powers and Duties of Juries, and on the Criminal Laws of England, 1811; A Morning's Walk from London to Kew, 1817; A Personal Tour Through the United Kingdom, 1828.

His own political leanings, evinced in Golden Rules of Social Philosophy, Or, A New System of Practical Ethics (1826) encouraged him to publish works by the radical jobbing writer of educational texts, Jeremiah Joyce, though often under pseudonymous disguises;[12] Rees and Britten asserted in their Reminiscences of Literary London that many works were written by Phillips and attributed to well-known writers, who oversaw the proofs and put their names to the manuscripts, for remuneration.