This biography is republished from The Dictionary of Irish Biography and was written by Daniel Beaumont. Shared by permission in line with Creative Commons ‘Attribution’ (CC BY) licencing.
Born: 1718 (circa), Ireland (assumed)
Died: 1795 (circa)
Country most active: Ireland
Also known as: Anne Middleton
Anne Esdall (c.1718–c.1795), printer, publisher, and bookseller. Anne (née Middleton ) married James Esdall on 31 August 1745. He kept away from Dublin for at least a year, during which time she endured great financial and emotional distress. Despite the pressures of supporting a household with four children she managed to keep the News-letter going. It was unusual for women to be involved in the print trade during the eighteenth century, although a small number of businesses were run by widows. In December 1749 she was examined by the Irish house of commons and asked to reveal the identity of the author of ‘scandalous’ paragraphs in her husband’s publications. Copies of the Censor and other works penned by Lucas were publicly burned and the Guild of St Luke was cautioned for not having a tighter rein over its members.
When James Esdall returned to Dublin (1750) he had not lost his appetite for publishing controversial works such as The case and tryal of John Peter Zenger (1750) but his health seems to have been affected by the Lucas case. He died on 24 March 1755 and an obituary written in the Dublin Journal by Faulkner recalled that ‘he suffered very much in health and fortune by certain people’. Anne Esdall intended to carry on the business but in June 1755 she sold the shop stock, household furniture, and printing materials. The News-letter was taken over by her husband’s apprentice Henry Saunders in 1755 (and thereafter called Saunder’s News-letter). James and Anne Esdall were among a handful of printers in Dublin in the 1740s and 1750s who were fiercely independent and not prepared to submit to government censorship. It was mainly through the medium of printed pamphlets and news sheets that Lucas was able to get his message across to the citizens of Dublin. But whereas Lucas was to be rehabilitated (elected MP for Dublin City in 1761) printers such as Esdall suffered long-term hardship as a result of their actions. In 1768 Anne petitioned her late husband’s guild for relief and in 1795, then aged 77, she was again in ‘distressed circumstances’ and granted three guineas (£3.15). She probably died soon after this date.