The first book Dunton ever printed was by the Rev. Mr. Doolittle, and was of an eminently religious character.

’One Lord’s Day (and I am very sensible of the sin) I was strolling about just as my fancy led me, and, stepping into Dr. Annesley’s meeting-place—­where, instead of engaging my attention to what the Doctor said, I suffered both my mind and eyes to run at random—­I soon singled out a young lady that almost charmed me dead; but, having made my inquiries, I found to my sorrow she was pre-engaged.’  However, Dunton was content with the elder sister, one of the three daughters of Dr. Annesley.  The one he first saw became the wife of the Reverend Samuel Wesley, and the mother of John and Charles.  The third daughter is said to have been married to Daniel De Foe.

As soon as he was out of his apprenticeship, Dunton set up business as a publisher and bookseller.  He says grimly enough: 

’A man should be well furnished with an honest policy if he intends to set out to the world nowadays.  And this is no less necessary in a bookseller than in any other tradesman, for in that way there are plots and counter-plots, and a whole army of hackney authors that keep their grinders moving by the travail of their pens.  These gormandizers will eat you the very life out of a copy so soon as ever it appears, for as the times go, Original and Abridgement are almost reckoned as necessary as man and wife.’

The mischief to which Dunton refers was permitted by the stupidity of the judges, who refused to consider an abridgment of a book any interference with its copyright.  Some learned judges have, indeed, held that an abridger is a benefactor, but as his benefactions are not his own, but another’s, a shorter name might be found for him.  The law on the subject is still uncertain.

Dunton proceeds:  ’Printing was now the uppermost in my thoughts, and hackney authors began to ply me with specimens as earnestly and with as much passion and concern as the watermen do passengers with Oars and Scullers.  I had some acquaintance with this generation in my apprenticeship, and had never any warm affection for them, in regard I always thought their great concern lay more in how much a sheet, than in any generous respect they bore to the Commonwealth of Learning; and indeed the learning itself of these gentlemen lies very often in as little room as their honesty, though they will pretend to have studied for six or seven years in the Bodleian Library, to have turned over the Fathers, and to have read and digested the whole compass both of human and ecclesiastic history, when, alas! they have never been able to understand a single page of St. Cyprian, and cannot tell you whether the Fathers lived before or after Christ.’