{{short description|British publisher and print-seller}} {{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}} '''Eleanor Lay''', usually styled '''Mrs Lay''' (active 1788–1790 in Brighton), was a publisher and print-seller, with a fashionable print shop on The Steine in Brighton. As well as selling prints from London publishers, she designed and published a number of prints herself, including four views of Brighton in 1788,<ref name="Ford">{{cite book|last1=Ford| first1=John & Jill |title='Images of Brighton' |publisher=Saint Helena Press| date=1981 | isbn=0906964024| location=Richmond on Thames}} Numbers 337, 338, 339, 340.</ref> dedicated to Mrs Fitzherbert. The original watercolours by Lay are in the Brighton Museum.<ref name="BrightonMuseum">{{cite AV media|url=https://brightonmuseums.org.uk/brighton/|title=Brighton Museum Collections}}(BPC00384, BPC00385, BPC00386, BPC00387.</ref>

In 1789, she published two prints by the young Thomas Rowlandson<ref name="DorothyGeorge">{{cite book|last1=George| first1=M Dorothy |title='Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires Preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum' |publisher=The British Museum| date=1870–1954| location=London}} BMSatires 7604.</ref> and also co-published several others for a drawing book by Rowlandson with the London publishers Samuel William Fores and John Harris.

One of her plates by Rowlandson ''A Sufferer for Decency'' was acquired by Thomas Tegg at some point and reissued by him with modified lettering in the 1810s in the ''Caricature Magazine''.

==See also== * List of women printers and publishers before 1800

== References == {{Reflist}}

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Lay, Eleanor}} Category:People from Brighton Category:Year of death unknown Category:Year of birth unknown Category:18th-century British publishers (people) Category:19th-century British publishers (people) Category:18th-century English businesspeople Category:18th-century English businesswomen Category:19th-century English businesswomen Category:19th-century English businesspeople

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