• Name: Whittaker, George Byrom
• Gender: Male
• Birth Date: 6  February  1793
• Death Date: 13  December  1847
• Occupation: publisher
• Occupation: bookseller

Whittaker acquired a publishign business in 1814. He was extremely successful and within a decade had become one of the country's major publishers. One of his interests was in educational publishing and he took on some of the copyrights of Sir Richard Phillips when his business failed. He suffered serious fraud in 1825 which put his business in jeopardy but recovered in later years.

In 1808 Godwin records that 'Whitaker' dies (see entry on John Whittaker). ('Whitaker, andc, bookkeeper' (1 July 1810) has not been coded as this seems to be a one-off encounter with someone named Whitaker on a coach journey) However, plain Whitaker entries feature 48 times between 1814 and 1825. The context suggests somebody from the book trade - he is listed in calls on booksellers, when Godwin sends his stepson Charles Clairmont on errands, he sometimes appears as 'Whitaker (St Paul's)', and there are also entries at the Guildhall. There are several letters, but these are not in Abinger. There are various candidates from The British Book Trade Index, including John Whitaker, of St Paul's Churchyard, but John seems mainly to have been a music seller and publisher, so this is less likely.

Mary Wollstonecraft-Shelley's Journals have a reference to Godwin and WB Whittaker (note spelling), p. 384, n. 1, and the DNB entry for George Byrom Whittaker mentions his brother, William Budd Whittaker, who was a partner in the firm and provided much of the capital. The firm seems to have crashed in 1825, after becoming the victim of fraud, but continued traditing while in administration and was released by creditors in 1828, despite not having paid off all their debts. George Byrom and William Budd Whittaker are certainly identifed by Godwin by GB Whitaker (24 December 1822) and WB Whitaker (10 February 1823, 11 July 1823, 16 July 1823). It is less clear that they are also denoted by plain Whitaker (sic).

The dates do fit well. all the references are between 1814, the year George Byrom Whittaker completed his apprenticeship and began trading under his own name, and 1825, the year of the fraud, when the reputation of the firm was severely damaged and Godwin might have taken his business elsewhere. In the decade or so between these dates, Whittakers was second only to Longmans in terms of the numbers of new titles it printed (DNB). But even more convincingly, Godwin oversaw the publication of Mary Shelley's Valperga, which was published by Whittakers in February 1823. At least two of the 1823 entries show the link connection between Mary Shelley and Whittakers during this year:
6 May 1823 'Write to M W G, Whitaker...'
4 September 1823 'Call on Whitaker, and Booth, for M W S:'

Accordingly, all entries to Whitaker have been coded as 'George Byrom Whittaker' with the exception of the few explicit entries to W. B. Whitaker .

• DNB
• The British Book Trade Index
• The journals of Mary Shelley, 1814–1844, ed. by Paula R. Feldman and Diana Scott-Kilvert, 2 vols (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press; Clarendon Press, 1987)

This table lists the people this person is most frequently noted with in the diary.