SOURCE: Creigh, Jocelyn C. “George Wither and the Stationers: Facts and Fiction.” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 74, no. 1 (1980): 49-57.

In the following essay, Creigh recounts the seventeenth-century dispute between Wither and the Company of Stationers.

Everyone who is at all interested in the Company of Stationers knows that in the early seventeenth century one of its most vociferous opponents was George Wither, gentleman, student at law (Lincolns Inn), poet, prolific writer, and, quite frequently, prisoner.

Wither's first brush with the law is chronicled by J. Milton French in “George Wither in Prison.”¹ In 1611 Wither published a satire called Abuses Stript and Whipt and as a result went to jail from which only the intervention of Princess Elizabeth released him. On publication of the second edition in 1614, he went back to the Marshalsea on 20 March and was not released until 26 July, this time thanks to William Herbert...