Thomas Millington (fl. 1591–1603) was a London publisher of the Elizabethan era, who published first editions of three Shakespearean plays. He has been called a "stationer of dubious reputation" who was connected with some of the "bad quartos" and questionable texts of Shakespearean bibliography.

Life and work

He was the son of a William Millington, a "husbandman" of Hamptongay, Oxfordshire, and was apprenticed to a Henry Carre for a period of eight years, beginning on St. Bartholomew's Day (24 August) in 1583. Thomas Millington became a "freeman" (full member) of the Stationers Company on 8 November 1591. For a time he was in partnership with fellow guild member Edward White; their shop was located, and their title pages specify, "at the little north door of Paul's at the sign of the Gun." Millington's business was at the lower end of the publishing scale in Elizabethan England; he printed many ballads, including some by Thomas Deloney. In 1595 he published The Norfolk Tragedy, a ballad based on the story of Babes in the Wood. During the mid-1590s Millington was fined three times by his guild, for issuing ballads to which he did not own the rights and similar small offenses.

Shakespeare

He also published playbooks — most notably, of four of Shakespeare's plays:

End

Thomas Millington published Henry Chettle's England's Mourning Garment in 1603, but then disappears from the historical record — as did fellow publisher Andrew Wise in the same year. The major outbreak of bubonic plague in London in 1603 might not have been coincidental; printer Peter Short died in 1603, while publisher William Ponsonby passed on in 1604.