The Printer’s Apprentice
A Novel of Plague, Fire, and the Press
London, 1665. As the Bills of Mortality climb and red crosses bloom on doors, sixteen-year-old Anne Ellwood keeps her father’s tiny print shop alive on Pudding Lane—inking formes, locking type, and learning that in a city of rumours, ink is the only honest witness. “Gold burns. Ink lasts,” her father says. Yet not all words bring comfort. Anonymous couriers begin arriving “as writ—no emendations,” and the neat “errors” in their loyal pamphlets whisper of a hidden hand moving men like freight.
When letters from a mysterious “John M.” start reaching Anne—pages on prisms, ciphers, and courage—the girl who sets other people’s sentences must decide which truths to print and which lies to refuse. Beside her stands Thomas, the quiet apprentice whose steadiness is a kind of oath; beyond the door are coffee-houses where talk becomes trade, counting-houses where coin becomes conscience, and a city that will soon trade one calamity for another.
Across 1665–1666, The Printer’s Apprentice follows Anne through plague winter and into the summer that ends in flame. You will walk Paul’s Walk and Exchange Alley; hear Pepys mutter about co-ordinated theft and a Lord Mayor reluctant to enlarge the watch; catch a glimpse of Evelyn measuring ruin into order; and feel London breathe again as the plague recedes, only to hold your breath when the wind turns and the night glows orange. As the Great Fire rises, Anne discovers what pamphlets can fetch that fire cannot—and how far she will go to keep her father’s name from burning with his shop.
This is a novel about words as weapons—how a mis-set letter can be a signal, how a handbill can summon a crowd, how a girl at a press can tilt a city by a single line. It is also a story of first loyalties, quiet heroism, and the stubborn courage of ordinary trades. In these pages you will find:
A vivid London: plague carts and parish pumps, rope-scented quays at midnight, coffee-houses that serve news by the penny, and the ash-bright mornings after fire.
A heroine to root for: Anne Ellwood, printer’s daughter, learning to read the marching of wrong letters and to set her own line straight.
A moral knot: When “necessary custom” pays the bills, what does a printer owe the truth?
Familiar witnesses: Pepys’s brisk ledger of survival; Evelyn’s clean-air resolve; a young Mr. Newton and Sir Thomas Bloodworth.
A breathless turn: a sting on the river stairs, a rumour dressed as law, and a night when the city must choose between orders and lanterns.
For readers of Sarah Waters, Hilary Mantel, Laura Shepherd-Robinson, and Stacy Schiff. The prose keeps a period cadence without losing pace; the research is woven into scene, not footnote.
What the book explores
Printing & power — the Stationers’ world, licensing, how a shop survives on the edge of law and custom.
Community under pressure — apprentices, midwives, watermen, coffee-house keepers; the way charity puts on its boots when sermons are not enough.
Plague & fire — terror and thrift, then heat and ash; how a city is unmade and remade by measured lines.
Hope — not the loud kind, but the kind that sets type in the dark so dawn has something to read.
The Printer’s Apprentice is ultimately a love letter to craft—to steady hands, honest tools, and sentences that outlast gold. When the smoke clears, what remains are the words we set for one another.
P.S. Curious readers may find that titles sometimes carry more than one duty