Letts, John

John Letts (c. 1772 - 1851) was a British stationer, diary publisher, and printer who established the Letts dynasty of British printers and publishers. Little is known of his life before he opened a stationary shop in the arcades of London's Royal Exchange in 1796. His products proved popular with local merchants and Letts's business succeeded, especially after he printed the world's first commercial diary (essentially a combination of a journal and a calendar) in 1812. These proved to be extremely popular and Letts began offering the diaries in a variety of sizes and formats. Under John's son Thomas Letts (1803 - 1873), the firm's (now 'Letts, Son and Co.') offerings expanded even more to industry-specific journals with dedicated technical information, as well as almanacs, calendars, parliamentary registers, ledgers, maps, and logbooks, all of which were printed in a series of factories in New Cross, London. Letts's diaries became ubiquitous not only among the clerical classes but also for intellectuals and adventurers. For instance, David Livingstone and Henry Morton Stanley recorded their travels across Africa in Letts diaries. Late in Thomas' life and tenure at the head of the company, it went public but soon lost direction and went into liquidation in 1885. The company was effectively refounded by Thomas' son Charles (1836 - 1912) as a private firm called 'Charles Letts and Co.' Charles quickly reestablished the company's reputation and business, becoming a major supplier of hundreds of different types of specialist and hobbyist diaries by the early 20th century. The firm in this original manifestation went through several reorganizations and mergers in more recent decades, but the family name survives in the stationary Filofax, Letts and Blueline Group as well as the education publisher Letts and Lonsdale.