Sayer, Robert

Robert Sayer (c.1725–1794) was one of Georgian Britain’s leading printsellers, map publishers, and chartmakers, operating from the long-established Golden Buck at 53 Fleet Street, a business he inherited through his connection to the Overton family after assisting Mary Overton from 1748 and gradually absorbing her late father-in-law John Overton’s stock. Sayer issued material under several imprints—initially as Robert Sayer, later as Sayer & Bennett (1774–1785), and finally as Sayer & Co. / Robert Sayer & Co.—reflecting the firm’s evolving structure. His key partner, John Bennett (fl.1760–d.1787), entered the business as a servant, became an apprentice in 1765, a free journeyman in 1774, and received a one-third share when the firm became Sayer & Bennett; however, Bennett showed signs of insanity by 1781, was admitted to Dr Thomas Monro’s asylum in Clapton in 1783, and the partnership was formally dissolved in 1785. Together the pair produced influential American atlases based on the plates of Thomas Jefferys—acquired by Sayer after Jefferys’s bankruptcy in 1766—and by the 1780s were the pre-eminent British suppliers of navigational charts. Sayer also issued Samuel Dunn’s Mundane System (1774) and the North American Pilot (from 1775), including important charts by Captain James Cook, and maintained an almost complete set of Hogarth copperplates, which he reprinted at prices that undercut Jane Hogarth. A wealthy and respected figure who lived on Richmond Hill, Sayer died in 1794, after which his long-time senior employees Robert Laurie and James Whittle took over the business as Laurie & Whittle.