Transcriber’s Note
Text on cover added by Transcriber and placed in the Public Domain.
A
HISTORY OF BOOKSELLERS,
THE OLD AND THE NEW.
By HENRY CURWEN.
“In these days, ten ordinary histories of kings and courtiers were well exchanged
against the tenth part of one good History of Booksellers.”—Thomas Carlyle.
WITH PORTRAITS AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
London:
CHATTO AND WINDUS, PICCADILLY.
PREFACE.
“History” has been aptly termed the“essence of innumerable biographies;” andthis surely justifies us in the selection ofour title; but in inditing a volume to be issued in acheap and popular form, it was manifestly impossibleto trace the careers of all the eminent members,ancient and modern, of a Trade so widely extended;had we, indeed, possessed all possible leisure forresearch, every available material, and a spacethoroughly unlimited, it is most probable that theresult would have been distinguished chiefly for itsbulk, tediousness, and monotony. It was resolved,therefore, in the first planning of the volume, toprimarily trace the origin and growth of the Booksellingand Publishing Trades up to a comparativelymodern period; and then to select, for fuller treatment,the most typical English representatives of eachone of the various branches into which a naturaldivision of labour had subdivided the whole. And,by this plan, it is believed that, while some firms atpresent growing into eminence may have beenomitted, or have received but scant acknowledgment,vino one Publisher or Bookseller, whose spirit and labourshave as yet had time to justify a claim to a niche inthe “History of Booksellers,” has been altogetherpassed over. In the course of our “History,”too, we have been necessarily concerned with themanner of the “equipping and furnishing” of nearlyevery great work in our literature. So that, while onthe one hand we have related the lives of a body ofmen singularly thrifty, able, industrious, and persevering—insome few cases singularly venturesome,liberal, and kindly-hearted—we have on the other, byour comparative view, tried to throw a fresh, at allevents a concentrated, light upon the interesting storyof literary struggle.
No work of the kind has ever previously beenattempted, and this fact must be an apology forsome, at least, of our shortcomings.
H. C.
November, 1873.