Jacob Ilive

Jacob Ilive (1705–1763) was an English type-founder, printer and author. He was a religious radical, who developed neognostic views based on deism. He spent time in prison, convicted of blasphemy.

Life He was the son of Thomas Ilive (died 1724), a London printer of Aldersgate Street, and his wife Jane James (1669–daughter of Thomas James, another printer. Two brothers, Abraham and Isaac, were also printers. He was apprenticed to his father, and freed from the bond in 1726, by his mother.

Around 1730, Ilive carried on both a type foundry and a printing business. In 1734 he lived by Aldersgate coffee house. From January 1736 to 1738 he published a rival to Edward Cave's Gentleman's Magazine. He sold the foundry in 1740, but kept the printing side going for the rest of his life. He went to live in "London House", the former residence of Christopher Rawlinson. In what was a tolerant epoch of the Church of England, Ilive was in a select group, with Peter Annet and Thomas Woolston, of those against whom blasphemy charges were successfully brought. Sherlock, by legal action, sought to discourage Ilive from publishing other deist writers. A Scheme (1759) for the employment of persons sent to prison as disorderly.