Colin Macfarquhar
{{Short description|Scottish bookseller and printer}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2020}}
Colin Macfarquhar (1744/5 – 2 April 1793){{cite encyclopedia|year=2004|title=Oxford Dictionary of National Biography|entry=Macfarquhar, Colin|title-link=Oxford Dictionary of National Biography}} was a Scottish bookseller and printer who is most known for co-founding Encyclopædia Britannica with Andrew Bell, first published in December 1768.{{Cite EB1911| wstitle=Prefatory Note |volume=1 |page=vi}}{{cite EB1911 |wstitle=Encyclopaedia |volume=9 |page=377}} The dates of his birth and death remain uncertain, even to Britannica itself.
Biography
Macfarquhar was born in Edinburgh to his father James Macfarquhar who was a wigmaker and his mother Margaret. His formal education ended when he was apprenticed to a printing firm and achieved the status of a master printer in 1767. On 13 December 1767 Macfarquhar married Jane whose father, James Scruton, was an accountant in Glasgow. Macfarquhar and Jane had one son and four daughters.
Macfarquhar opened a printing shop in Edinburgh one or two years after getting married.{{Cite journal|last=Kafker|first=Frank A.|date=2008-10-01|title=The achievement of Andrew Bell and Colin Macfarquhar as the first publishers of the Encyclopaedia Britannica|journal=Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies|language=en|volume=18|issue=2|pages=139–152|doi=10.1111/j.1754-0208.1995.tb00185.x|issn=1754-0194}} The first edition of Britannica was sold at his printing office in Nicolson Street.{{Cite news|url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Colin-Macfarquhar|title=Colin Macfarquhar {{!}} Scottish printer|work=Encyclopedia Britannica|access-date=2018-07-13|language=en}} Macfarquhar also contributed heavily to the second and third editions of Britannica.{{cite encyclopedia | title = Oxford Dictionary of National Biography | entry = Bell, Andrew | year = 2004 | title-link = Oxford Diionary of National Biography }}
References
{{Reflist}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Macfarquhar, Colin}}
Category:Scottish company founders
Category:Contributors to the Encyclopædia Britannica
Category:Publishers (people) from Edinburgh