A History of Booksellers, the Old and the New

Transcriber’s Note Text on cover added by Transcriber and placed in the Public Domain.
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.

“History” has been aptly termed the “essence of innumerable biographies;” and this surely justifies us in the selection of our title; but in inditing a volume to be issued in a cheap and popular form, it was manifestly impossible to trace the careers of all the eminent members, ancient and modern, of a Trade so widely extended; had we, indeed, possessed all possible leisure for research, every available material, and a space thoroughly unlimited, it is most probable that the result would have been distinguished chiefly for its bulk, tediousness, and monotony. It was resolved, therefore, in the first planning of the volume, to primarily trace the origin and growth of the Bookselling and Publishing Trades up to a comparatively modern period; and then to select, for fuller treatment, the most typical English representatives of each one of the various branches into which a natural division of labour had subdivided the whole. And, by this plan, it is believed that, while some firms at present growing into eminence may have been omitted, or have received but scant acknowledgment, no one Publisher or Bookseller, whose spirit and labours have as yet had time to justify a claim to a niche in the “History of Booksellers,” has been altogether passed over. In the course of our “History,” too, we have been necessarily concerned with the manner of the “equipping and furnishing” of nearly every great work in our literature. So that, while on the one hand we have related the lives of a body of men singularly thrifty, able, industrious, and persevering—in some few cases singularly venturesome, liberal, and kindly-hearted—we have on the other, by our comparative view, tried to throw a fresh, at all events a concentrated, light upon the interesting story of literary struggle.