A History of Booksellers, the Old and the New

by Henry Curwen

By far the largest business in this branch of the trade is executed by the old-established firm of Simpkin, Marshall, and Company, and though they by no means confine their attention solely to the commission-paying business of middlemen—for they are themselves publishers of educational and other widely-circulating works—yet their name has long, throughout the length and breadth of the land, been held synonymous with this wholesale supply of the requirements of other houses.

The real founder of this enormous traffic was, Benjamin Crosby. The son of a Yorkshire grazier, he came to London to seek his fortunes, and was apprenticed to James Nunn, a bookseller in Great Queen Street. As soon as his indentures had expired, he obtained a situation under George Robinson—the “King of the Booksellers”—and, in a few years after this, succeeded to the business of Mr. Stalker, of Stationers’ Hall Court. Crosby was one of the first London booksellers who travelled regularly through the country, soliciting orders for the purpose of effecting sales and extending his connections. In a short time he acquired a pre-eminence as a supplier of the country houses, and also as one of the largest purchasers at trade sales, especially when publishers’ stocks were sold off. The extension of the business had been very materially assisted by the unremitting exertions of two assistants—Simpkin and Marshall—and when, in 1814, he was stricken by a sudden attack of paralysis, he made over a certain portion of his stock and the whole of his country connection to Robert Baldwin, and Cradock and Joy, he left the remainder, with the premises and the London connection, to Simpkin and Marshall. Soon after this, a second attack deprived him of his speech, and for a time of his reason, and he died in the following year, 1815.

Under Simpkin and Marshall, which was now, of course, the new title of the firm, the business soon began again to expand, for they retained most of their London connections, and following Crosby’s example, attracted the attention of many country clients, whom they not only supplied with books, but for whose publications they became the London agents—a business without speculative risk, and consequently profitable. For instance, in 1827, an unpretentious little volume—“Poems by Two Brothers,” having the modest motto, Hæc nos novimus esse nihil, published by J. and J. Jackson, Louth, was also stamped with the imprimatur of Simpkin and Marshall, and thus they had the signal honour of being Mr. Tennyson’s first London publishers, though very probably the honour in this case was greater than the profit.

In 1828, Simpkin retired, or rather was bought out of the business by Mr. Miles, who immediately took the financial management of the whole concern, and the firm adopted the new title of “Simpkin, Marshall and Co.” Simpkin, however, did not die until the 25th of December, 1854, and thus enjoyed a long period of peaceful superannuation.

The practice of lending their names to the works published by their country clients, though free from business venture, was not unattended by legal risk, for in 1834 they had an action brought against them for libel, which at the time attracted a very general and lively interest; though they were indicted solely as the London agents of Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine, in which a series of articles had appeared, reflecting on the conduct of Richmond, a man notorious as a spy, and who, as an instrument of the Government, had procured the execution of Hardie and his companion at Glasgow in the winter of 1819–20. Richmond laid the damages that his character had sustained at the absurd figure of five thousand pounds, but Mr. Serjeant Talfourd, to whom the defence was entrusted, so thoroughly exposed the antecedents and present means of livelihood of the plaintiff that before the trial was over he was absolutely fain to withdraw his action and elect to be non-suited.

In 1837 Baldwin and Cradock failed, and handed over the country connection they had derived from Crosby, to Simpkin, Marshall and Company. This occurred on the October “Magazine day” of that year; for three days and three nights the partners and their assistants never left the establishment at Stationers’ Hall Court, and Baldwin’s country clients were so pleased that they had been spared so much expected delay and annoyance that one and all resolved to keep their business in the hands of their new agents; and with this addition to their trade, the business relations of Simpkin, Marshall and Company were now infinitely beyond anything that even Crosby had before experienced.

In 1855, Richard Marshall retired from the business, and consequently, the management of the concern remained almost entirely in the hands of Mr. Miles’s two sons. Marshall died at the ripe age of seventy-five, on the 17th of November, 1863.

In 1859 the premises were rebuilt and enlarged, and every possible improvement, to save trouble and economise time, was introduced into the new establishment. Among the gentlemen who had been employed in the old warehouse was Mr. F. Laurie, a barrister-at-law, who afterwards served in the printed-book department of the British Museum, and who was widely known as the author of a “Life of Henry Fielding,” and as a frequent contributor to periodical literature. As none of the country booksellers have more than one London agent, by him they are supplied with the books and periodicals of all the London publishers, an arrangement that saves an infinity of trouble, expense and delay. A century ago, in the days of small things, the agent made himself useful to the provincial bookseller in many other ways than in the mere supplying of publications. In many cases he was expected to forward the newspapers, but other and stranger commissions often fell to his lot. A great wholesale house in London at the present day would be rather surprised to receive the following orders, which, however, all occur in a bookseller’s records late in the eighteenth century:—“1 sliding Gunter from some of the instrument makers;” “two-eighth share of lottery-tickets;” “1 oz. of Maker’s Cobalt, as advertized on the cover of the Gentleman’s Magazine;” or a direction “to please and send on Saturday, and pay Mr. Barratt, Parliament Place, Palace Yard, Westminster, £1 0s. 6d., King’s Rent, due 10th of October last, for the Vicarage of Holy Cross, Shrewsbury.”

We cannot, perhaps, convey a better idea of the manner in which business is conducted by these wholesale houses in the “Row,” than by giving a description of “Magazine day,”—by far the busiest time in each month. Very quiet is Paternoster Row generally, and its solitude is broken only by the fitful and fleeting appearance of publishers, their agents, and literary men—the latter, as a rule, in clerical costume, with white neckties which betray their avocation as lying in “the religious publication line of business;” while its silence is broken by some venturous barrel-organ player, or by an old blind fiddler, whose music is appreciated and encouraged by the young shop-boys, lurking behind each alley corner to enjoy the furtive pipe. But on “Magazine day” all this is changed, the street is now a struggling scene of bustle and confusion; now every house is in a thrill of agitation from the garret to the cellar, and now every business nerve is strained. Owing to the inconvenient innovation of magazine proprietors, in publishing their periodicals on different days, “Magazine day” has lost much of its pristine glory, but even now the work commences on the eve of the chief day of publication, which is known consequently as “late night,” for the assistants are generally kept busily engaged till twelve or one o’clock. By the morning’s post of this preceding day the country orders arrive, and the invoices have to be made out from the lists received. Every regular customer has his allotted pigeon-hole, into which the invoices are put as soon as copied, together with such of the books he has ordered as are on the premises; for the majority of the smaller country booksellers take advantage of their monthly parcels, and to save expense of frequent railway carriage, include also in their orders such recent books as they may require. Early in the morning, or sometimes on the night before, the magazines arrive, and it is on this morning that the real work begins, for though as large a stock of current literature is kept in each warehouse as is possible, there are still many publishers to be sent to. While the assistants are busily engaged sorting out the books, and supplying each order with the works they have in hand, the “collectors” are furnished with lists of the books required from other houses. The “collector” is by no means an unimportant person in a publisher’s establishment; though “seedy” in attire and suspicious in general appearance, he is entrusted with large sums of money, for the cheaper publications are all paid for in ready cash. Bag in hand he rushes in hot haste all over London, and with an impudent tongue and a pair of brawny shoulders, thrusts himself to the front place before each publisher’s counter. As we listen for a moment to the reply he receives as to the price of a cheap periodical, we may gain an insight into the middleman’s system of profit. “Sixes are fours and twelves are thirteens!” yells the shop-boy, the which being interpreted means that the wholesale price of the sixpenny periodical in question is fourpence, and that thirteen copies go to the dozen.

The bustle at each establishment is, of course, greatly increased by the fact that each house has to supply the wants of others, as well as to satisfy its own—all the counters of the wholesale booksellers being filled with screeching collectors, with greedily-gaping bags. Early in the afternoon, however, the collectors return, and now the books, magazines, and invoices are carried into the packing department, and such works as could not be obtained are written off as “out of print,” &c. Packing is an art not easily acquired, and necessitates the patient and skilful use of much brown paper, and, in many houses, of paper-pulp stereo-moulds, by way of stiffening. The smaller parcels are finished first, and as soon as all are ready for removal the carriers’ carts and vans arrive; all entering the Row in regular order from the Ludgate Hill end, and leaving it in the direction of Cheapside. By the time that peace and quietude are restored to the neighbourhood, some two and a half millions of volumes and periodicals (Simpkin, Marshall and Company alone having probably despatched from six to eight hundred different parcels) are flying from London to all parts of the kingdom—to be greedily devoured and depreciatingly criticised on the morrow.