thumb|alt=People congregate at the entrance to a narrow street, overlooked by two four-storey buildings. Each floor of the right-most building projects further over the street than the floor below. At the corner of each building, shops advertise their wares. A cart is visible down the street, and one man appears to be carrying a large leg of meat.|19th-century Grub Street (latterly Milton Street), as pictured in [[Chambers Book of Days]]
Grub Street (later known as Milton Street) was a street located in the Cripplegate Without suburb, immediately north of London's defensive wall. The street ran from Fore Street east of St Giles-without-Cripplegate, north to Chiswell Street.
The street was later renamed Milton Street, which was heavily damaged by World War II bombing and then partly swallowed up by the Barbican Estate development, but still survives in part. The name Grub Street has survived as a pejorative term for impoverished hack writers and writings of low literary value.
Grub Street was pierced along its length with narrow entrances to alleys and courts, many of which retained the names of early signboards. Its bohemian society was set amidst the impoverished neighbourhood's low-rent dosshouses, brothels and coffeehouses.
Famous for its concentration of impoverished "hack writers", aspiring poets, and low-end publishers and booksellers, Grub Street existed on the margins of London's journalistic and literary scene.
According to Samuel Johnson's Dictionary, the term was "originally the name of a street... much inhabited by writers of small histories, dictionaries, and temporary poems, whence any mean production is called grubstreet". Johnson himself is said to have lived and worked on Grub Street early in his career, but this is doubtful. The contemporary image of Grub Street was popularised by Alexander Pope in his Dunciad.
Toponymy
Grub Street appears to have taken its name from a refuse ditch (grub) that ran alongside, and variations on the name include Grobstrat (1217–1243), Grobbestrate (1277–1278), Grubbestrate (1281), Grubbestrete (1298), Grubbelane (1336), Grubstrete, and Crobbestrate. Grub is also a derogatory noun applied to "a person of mean abilities, a literary hack; in recent use, a person of slovenly attire and unpleasant manners".
According to the Oxford English Dictionary the verb grub means "To dig superficially; to break up the surface of (the ground); to clear (ground) of roots and stumps." The earliest use of the word is in 1300, "Theif hus brecand, or gruband grund", and in 1572 "Ze suld your ground grube with simplicitie". It has the same etymological root as grave and graft. Much of the area was originally extensive marshlands from the Fleet Ditch, to Bishopsgate, contiguous with Moorfields to the east. however, the marshes were drained in 1527. The virginalist Giles Farnaby also lived in Grub Street from 1634 until his death in 1640.
left|thumb|alt=A hand-drawn colourless map shows a narrow network of streets and alleys. Each is named. The Church of St Giles is visible, as are parts of Moorfields to the east.|Grub Street, as recorded in [[John Rocque's 1746 map of London. At the time, its path was partly within Cripplegate Ward, but outside the city walls of the City of London. The surviving Milton Street is now entirely within the City of London.]]
thumb|A late 18th-century illustration of a property on Sweedon's Passage, Grub Street
An early use of the land surrounding Grub Street was archery. In Records of St. Giles' Cripplegate (1883), the author describes an order made by Henry VII to convert Finsbury Fields from gardens, to fields for archery practice; however, in Elizabethan times archery became unfashionable, and Grub Street is described as largely deserted, "except for low gambling houses and bowling-alleys—or, as we should call them, skittle-grounds." John Stow also referred to Grubstreete in A Survey of London Volume II (1603) as "It was convenient for bowyers, since it lay near the Archery-butts in Finsbury Fields", and in 1651 the poet Thomas Randolph wrote "Her eyes are Cupid's Grub-Street: the blind archer, Makes his love-arrows there."
The little London directory of 1677 lists six merchants living in 'Grubſreet', and Costermongers also plied their trade—a Mr Horton, who died in September 1773, earned a fortune of £2,000 by hiring wheelbarrows out. Land was cheap and occupied mostly by the poor, and the area was renowned for the presence of Ague and the Black Death; in the 1660s the Great Plague of London killed nearly eight thousand of the parish's inhabitants.
The population of St Giles in 1801 has been estimated at about 25,000 people, but by the end of the 19th century this was dropping steadily. In the 18th century Cripplegate was well known as an area haunted by insalubrious folk,
Four so-called 'cages' were maintained by the parish, shelters used as lying-in hospitals, housing the poor, and 'idle imposters'. Conditions in the cages were poor, and some people brought in there from the street died of hunger. One such cage was situated amidst the poor-quality housing stock of Grub Street; destitution was viewed as a crime against society, and was punishable by whipping, and also by having a hole cut in the gristle of the right ear. Well before the influx of writers in the 18th century, Grub Street was therefore in an economically deprived area.
Early literature
The earliest literary reference to Grub Street appears in 1630 by the English poet John Taylor. "When strait I might descry, The Quintescence of Grubstreet, well distild Through Cripplegate in a contagious Map". The local population <!-- of St. Giles -->was known for its nonconformist views; its Presbyterian preacher Samuel Annesley had been replaced in 1662 by an Anglican. Famous 16th-century Puritans included John Foxe, who may have authored his Book of Martyrs in the area,
Press freedom
In 1403 the City of London Corporation approved the formation of a guild of stationers. Stationers were either booksellers, illuminators, or bookbinders. Printing gradually displaced manuscript production, and by the time that the guild received a royal charter of incorporation on 4 May 1557, becoming the Stationers' Company, it was in effect a printers' guild. In 1559, it became the 47th livery company.
The Stationers' Company had considerable powers of search and seizure, backed by the state (which supplied the force and authority to guarantee copyright). This monopoly continued until 1641 when, inflamed by the treatment of religious dissenters such as John Lilburne and William Prynne, the Long Parliament abolished the Star Chamber (a court which controlled the press) with the Habeas Corpus Act 1640. This led to the de facto cessation of state censorship of the press. Although in 1641 token punishments were given to those responsible for unlicensed and hostile pamphlets published around London—including Grub Street—Puritan and radical pamphlets continued to be distributed by an informal network of street hawkers, and dissenters from within the Stationers' Company.
Tabloid journalism became rife; the unstable political climate resulted in the publication from Grub Street of anti-Caroline literature, along with blatant lies and anti-Catholic stories regarding the Irish Rebellion of 1641; stories that were advantageous to the parliamentary leadership. Following the King's failed attempt to arrest several members of the Commons, Grub Street printer Bernard Alsop became personally involved in the publication of false pamphlets, including a fake letter from the Queen that resulted in John Bond being pilloried. Alsop and colleague Thomas Fawcett were sent to Fleet Prison for several months.
Throughout the English Civil War therefore, publishers and writers remained answerable to the law. State control of the press was tightened in the Licensing Order of 1643, but although the new regime was arguably as restrictive as the monopoly that the Stationers' Company once enjoyed, parliament was unable to control the number of renegade presses that flourished during the Interregnum. The freedoms ensured by the Bill of Rights 1689 led indirectly to the refusal in 1695 of the Parliament of England to renew the Licensing of the Press Act 1662, a law which required all printing presses to be licensed by Parliament. This lapse led to a freer press, and a rise in the volume of printed matter. Jonathan Swift wrote to a friend in New York, "I could send you a great deal of news from the Republica Grubstreetaria, which was never in greater altitude."
Hacks
thumb|right|alt=In a small scruffy garret, with a fireplace at the back of the room, a man sits at a desk underneath a roof window, quill in his hand, writing on a sheet of paper. A woman sits in the centre of the room, repairing clothes. Some of these clothes are on the floor, and a cat is sleeping on the pile they form. Underneath the pile, partially concealed, is a copy of a journal. The woman is looking at another woman who has entered the room to the left, who holds a list of items. At her feet, a dog is stealing a piece of food from a plate on a chair.|A copy of [[Grub Street Journal|The Grub Street Journal lies at the writer's feet, in William Hogarth's The Distrest Poet. Set in a garret, the print has been described as a study of a typical Grub Street writer.]]
thumb|right|upright|alt=In a windowed room, with a large fire blazing in the background, two long tables accommodate groups of men engaged in apparent discussion. Other men sit reading and smoking pipes, backs to the viewer. In the foreground, a small serving boy pours coffee from a container into a cup. In the distance, next to the fireplace, a woman serves from a hatch.|The Coffeehous Mob, [[Book frontispiece|frontispiece to Ned Ward's Vulgus Britannicus (1710). The fruits of the Grub Street publishers were read and debated in houses like this. Such contemporary views of the writer, in his inexpensive Ivory Tower high above the noise of the city, were immortalised by William Hogarth in his 1736 illustration The Distrest Poet. The street name became a synonym for a hack writer; in a literary context, 'hack' is derived from Hackney—a person whose services may be for hire, especially a literary drudge. In this framework, hack was popularised by authors such as Andrew Marvell, John Wolcot, and Anthony Trollope. Ned Ward's late 17th-century description reinforces a common view of Grub Street authors, as little more than prostitutes:
One such author was Samuel Boyse. Contemporary accounts picture him as a dishonest and disreputable rogue, paid for each individual line of prose as a Jack of all trades, master of none. He apparently lived in squalor, often drunk, and on one occasion after pawning his shirt, he fashioned a replacement out of paper. To be a called a 'Grub Street author' was therefore often viewed as an insult, however Grub Street hack James Ralph—who later turned historian—offered one of the period’s most explicit defences of paid authorship in his anonymous pamphlet The Case of Authors by Profession or Trade, Stated:
Periodicals
In response to the newly increased demand for reading matter in the Augustan period, Grub Street became a popular source of periodical literature. One publication to take advantage of the reduction of state control<!-- abolition of the Star Chamber --> was A Perfect Diurnall (despite its title, a weekly publication). However it quickly found its name copied by unscrupulous Grub Street publishers, so obviously that the newspaper was forced to issue a warning to its readers.
Toward the end of the 17th century, authors such as John Dunton worked on a range of periodicals, including Pegasus (1696), and The Night Walker: or, Evening Rambles in search after lewd Women (1696–1697). Dunton pioneered the advice column in Athenian Mercury (1690–1697). The satirical writer and publican Ned Ward published The London Spy (1698–1700) in monthly instalments, for over a year and a half. It was conceived as a guide to the sights of the city, but as a periodical also contained details on taverns, coffee-houses, tobacco shops, and bagnios.
thumb|upright|alt=In a full-length portrait, an overweight middle-aged man stands, legs slightly apart, with his right hand resting on the top of a coat of arms, leant on the top of an ornate table. In his left hand he holds a large white document. He is dressed in expensive 18th-century clothing, with a blue sash over his left shoulder, and a long grey wig. Behind him, a large pale column of stone rises from a tiled floor. A balustrade connects to the column, and a small green plant is visible.|[[Robert Walpole used Treasury funds to subsidise elements of the press that were sympathetic to the Whig government. English newspapers were often politically sponsored, and Grub Street was host to several such publications; between 1731 and 1741 Robert Walpole's ministry was reported to have spent about £50,077 (about £ today) nationally of Treasury funds on bribes to such newspapers. Allegiances changed often, with some authors changing their political stance on receipt of bribes from secret service funds.
Such changes helped maintain the level of disdain with which the establishment viewed journalists and their trade, an attitude often reinforced by the abuse publications would print about their rivals. Titles such as Common Sense, Daily Post, and the Jacobite's Journal (1747–1748) were often guilty of this practice, and in May 1756 an anonymous author described journalists as "dastardly mongrel insects, scribbling incendiaries, starveling savages, human shaped tygers, senseless yelping curs..." In describing his profession, Samuel Johnson, a Grub Street man himself, said "A news-writer is a man without virtue who writes lies at home for his own profit. To these compositions is required neither genius nor knowledge, neither industry nor sprightliness, but contempt of shame and indifference to truth are absolutely necessary."
James Ralph (c.1705–1762) was among the most active Grub Street journalists: he wrote leaders for The Weekly Register and The Daily Courant, reported parliamentary debates for the anti-ministerial Universal Spectator (1737–1739), co-edited The Champion (1739–1744) with Henry Fielding, and edited the opposition weeklies Old England (1743) and The Remembrancer (1747). In 1753 he launched The Protestor, which campaigned against the Jewish Naturalisation Act 1753. He also set out an explicit defence of paid authorship in The Case of Authors by Profession or Trade, Stated (1758).