Engraver, original projector and proprietor of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. He married Anne, the daughter of Joseph Wake, an excise officer, on 20 June 1756, and had two daughters. He died on 10 June 1809 in Edinburgh. His estate included printing works, a linen factory, a home on Lauriston Lane in a fashionable residential suburb of Edinburgh.
Son of John Bell, a baker. He was apprenticed to Richard Cooper the elder and began his career modestly as an engraver of letters, names, and crests on plates and dog collars. One of his customers was the Scottish Society of Freemasons, which he joined in 1755. Although he was a mediocre engraver who often copied the plates of others, he trained such engravers as Hector Gavin, Francis Legat, Alexander Robertson, and Daniel Lizars and produced book illustrations for such works as William Smellie's translation of Buffon's Histoire naturelle (1781–5), Bernhard Siegfried Albinus's Tables of the Skeleton and Muscles of the Human Body (1777), and his own Anatomica Britannica: a System of Anatomy (1798). He was a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland and engraver to the prince of Wales.
Bell made his mark less as an engraver than as co-publisher with the printer Colin Macfarquhar and others of the early editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. He furnished the plates, and Macfarquhar did some of the printing.
See F. A. Kafker, 'The achievement of Andrew Bell and Colin Macfarquhar as the first publishers of the Encyclopaedia Britannica', British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 18 (1995), 139–52, also DNB.
Died at Lauriston, Edinburgh aged 83.
Greyfriars Burial Register:
1809 June 13 – Andrew Bell, Engraver; aged 83 years.
Son of John Bell, a baker. He was apprenticed to Richard Cooper the elder and began his career modestly as an engraver of letters, names, and crests on plates and dog collars. One of his customers was the Scottish Society of Freemasons, which he joined in 1755. Although he was a mediocre engraver who often copied the plates of others, he trained such engravers as Hector Gavin, Francis Legat, Alexander Robertson, and Daniel Lizars and produced book illustrations for such works as William Smellie's translation of Buffon's Histoire naturelle (1781–5), Bernhard Siegfried Albinus's Tables of the Skeleton and Muscles of the Human Body (1777), and his own Anatomica Britannica: a System of Anatomy (1798). He was a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland and engraver to the prince of Wales.
Bell made his mark less as an engraver than as co-publisher with the printer Colin Macfarquhar and others of the early editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. He furnished the plates, and Macfarquhar did some of the printing.
See F. A. Kafker, 'The achievement of Andrew Bell and Colin Macfarquhar as the first publishers of the Encyclopaedia Britannica', British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 18 (1995), 139–52, also DNB.
Died at Lauriston, Edinburgh aged 83.
Greyfriars Burial Register:
1809 June 13 – Andrew Bell, Engraver; aged 83 years.
Engraver, original projector and proprietor of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. He married Anne, the daughter of Joseph Wake, an excise officer, on 20 June 1756, and had two daughters. He died on 10 June 1809 in Edinburgh. His estate included printing works, a linen factory, a home on Lauriston Lane in a fashionable residential suburb of Edinburgh.
Son of John Bell, a baker. He was apprenticed to Richard Cooper the elder and began his career modestly as an engraver of letters, names, and crests on plates and dog collars. One of his customers was the Scottish Society of Freemasons, which he joined in 1755. Although he was a mediocre engraver who often copied the plates of others, he trained such engravers as Hector Gavin, Francis Legat, Alexander Robertson, and Daniel Lizars and produced book illustrations for such works as William Smellie's translation of Buffon's Histoire naturelle (1781–5), Bernhard Siegfried Albinus's Tables of the Skeleton and Muscles of the Human Body (1777), and his own Anatomica Britannica: a System of Anatomy (1798). He was a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland and engraver to the prince of Wales.
Bell made his mark less as an engraver than as co-publisher with the printer Colin Macfarquhar and others of the early editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. He furnished the plates, and Macfarquhar did some of the printing.
See F. A. Kafker, 'The achievement of Andrew Bell and Colin Macfarquhar as the first publishers of the Encyclopaedia Britannica', British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 18 (1995), 139–52, also DNB.
Died at Lauriston, Edinburgh aged 83.
Greyfriars Burial Register:
1809 June 13 – Andrew Bell, Engraver; aged 83 years.
Son of John Bell, a baker. He was apprenticed to Richard Cooper the elder and began his career modestly as an engraver of letters, names, and crests on plates and dog collars. One of his customers was the Scottish Society of Freemasons, which he joined in 1755. Although he was a mediocre engraver who often copied the plates of others, he trained such engravers as Hector Gavin, Francis Legat, Alexander Robertson, and Daniel Lizars and produced book illustrations for such works as William Smellie's translation of Buffon's Histoire naturelle (1781–5), Bernhard Siegfried Albinus's Tables of the Skeleton and Muscles of the Human Body (1777), and his own Anatomica Britannica: a System of Anatomy (1798). He was a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland and engraver to the prince of Wales.
Bell made his mark less as an engraver than as co-publisher with the printer Colin Macfarquhar and others of the early editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. He furnished the plates, and Macfarquhar did some of the printing.
See F. A. Kafker, 'The achievement of Andrew Bell and Colin Macfarquhar as the first publishers of the Encyclopaedia Britannica', British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 18 (1995), 139–52, also DNB.
Died at Lauriston, Edinburgh aged 83.
Greyfriars Burial Register:
1809 June 13 – Andrew Bell, Engraver; aged 83 years.
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