Elizabeth Mallet

Elizabeth Mallet ( 1672–1706) was an English printer and bookseller who produced England's first daily newspaper, The Daily Courant.

Career Printed speeches and the family business In 1672, Mallet married David Mallet. During the 1670s and 1680s, she and David dominated the trade in printed speeches given by condemned prisoners before execution at Tyburn ("last dying speeches"), publishing them from Blackhorse Alley in Fleet Street. After her husband died in 1683, she apprenticed their son David to the printing and bookselling trade, and ran two presses. However, her son failed in this enterprise.

Within ten years Mallet was again in charge of the family business, publishing serial news publications such as The New State of Europe (launched 20 September 1701) and sensational tracts. She avoided news from London because publishing it risked government reprisals, and would have been more easily contradicted. Writing under a male name, Mallet claimed only to provide the facts, and to let the reader make up their own minds, saying: "Nor will [the Author] take it upon himself to give any Comments or Conjectures of his own, but will relate only Matter of Fact; supposing other People to have Sense enough to make Reflections for themselves."