Fleury Mesplet (January 10, 1734—January 24, 1794) was a French-Canadian printer. January 10 is the 10th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... Events January 8 - Premiere of George Frideric Handels opera Ariodante at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. ... January 24 is the 24th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 1794 was a common year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar). ...

Born and apprenticed in Lyons, he emigrated to London in 1773 where he set up shop in Covent Garden. In 1774 he emigrated to Philadelphia; it is thought that he may have been persuaded to do so by Benjamin Franklin. At Philadelphia he again went into business as a printer, but received little work; he printed the Lettre adressée aux habitans de la province de Québec, ci-devant le Canada (Letter to the Inhabitants of Canada) for the Continental Congress in 1775, and travelled to Montréal the following year to set up a printing press in the newly captured city. Lyons), see Lyons (disambiguation). ... 1773 was a common year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ... Covent Garden is a shopping and entertainment complex in central London. ... 1774 was a common year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar). ... Philadelphia is a village located in Jefferson County, New York. ... On May 29, 1775, the American Continental Congress sent a formal letter to the Inhabitants of Canada inviting them to join in the American Revolution. ... The Continental Congress was the legislature of the Thirteen Colonies and later of the United States from 1774 to 1789, a period that included the American Revolutionary War and the Articles of Confederation. ... 1775 was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ... {{Canadian City/Disable Field={{{Disable Motto Link}}}}} Motto: Concordia Salus (Salvation through harmony) Ville de Montréal, Québec, Canada Location. ...

As the Americans withdrew from Montréal, he was arrested and imprisoned, but released later in the year; despite this, he managed to publish several works in 1776.

In 1778 he founded the Gazette Littéraire de Montréal, edited by Valentin Jautard. Both were arrested in 1779 for sedition, and imprisoned for three years; on his release, Mesplet was $5,000 in debt - yet he quickly dealt with his creditors, and in 1785, published La Gazette de Montréal, now the Montreal Gazette, the successor to the suspended Gazette Littéraire. The Gazette is a major English-language daily newspaper produced out of Montreal, Quebec. ...

In total, he published some seventy or eighty works, in French, English, Latin and Iroquois; ten of these ran to more than a hundred pages, and another seven were almanacs.

References

• Dictionary of Canadian Biography - http://www.biographi.ca/EN/ShowBio.asp?BioId=36188]
• Five Hundred Years of Printing, S.H. Steinberg, Penguin, 1955.