James Lackington, Bookseller.
1746–1816.
In a short time he had realized £25, and was able to take a book-shop in Chiswell Street; and here he almost immediately lost his wife, which for a time involved him in the deepest distress, but in the following year he married again, and then resolved to quit his Wesleyan friends, a sect he thought incompatible with the dignity of a bookseller; indeed “Mr. Wesley often told his society in Broadment, Bristol, in my hearing, that he could never keep a bookseller six months in his flock.” From this time success uniformly attended his undertakings, and was due, he says, primarily to his invariable principle of selling at very low figures and only for ready-money. When he began to attend the trade sales he created consternation among his brethren. “I was very much surprised to learn that it was common for such as purchased remainders to destroy or burn one-half or three-fourths of such books, and to charge the full publication price, or nearly that, for such as they kept on hand.” With this rule he complied for a short time; but afterwards resolved to keep the whole stock. The trade endeavoured to hinder his appearance at the sale-rooms, but in time they were forced to yield, and he continued to sell off remainders at half or a quarter the published price.[8] “By selling them in this cheap manner, I have disposed of many hundred thousand volumes, many thousand of which have been intrinsically worth their original prices.” Such a method attracted a crowd of customers, and he soon began to buy manuscripts from authors. As to how his circumstances were improving we read, “I discovered that lodgings in the country were very healthy. The year after, my country lodging was transformed into a country house, and in another year the inconveniences attending a stage coach were remedied by a chariot,” on the doors of which “I have put a motto to remind me to what I am indebted to my prosperity, viz.:—Small Profits do Great Things.” Again, he was very fond of repeating, “I found all I possess in small profits, bound by industry and clasped with economy.”
The shop in Chiswell Street was now changed into a huge building at the corner of Finsbury Square, grandly styled the “Temple of the Muses;” above it floated a flag, over the door was the inscription “Cheapest bookshop in the world,” and inside appeared the notice that “the lowest price is marked on every Book, and no abatement made on any article.” “Half-a-million of volumes” were said, according to his catalogue, “to be constantly on sale,” and these were arranged in galleries and rooms, rising in tiers—the more expensive books at the bottom, and the prices diminishing with every floor, but all numbered according to a catalogue, which Lackington compiled himself, and even the first he issued contained 12,000 volumes. During his first year at the “Temple of the Muses” he cleared £5000. In 1798, he was able to retire with a large fortune, and he again joined the Methodists, building and endowing three chapels for them, in contrition for having maligned them in his rambling Memoirs. Latterly he was fond of travelling, and made a tour of bookselling inspection through England and Scotland, seeing discouraging signs in every town but Edinburgh, “where indeed a few capital articles are kept.” “At York and Leeds there were a few (and but very few) good books; but in all the other towns between London and Edinburgh nothing but trash was to be found.” In Scotland, he looked forward with great curiosity to seeing the women washing soiled linen in the rivers, standing bare-legged the while, and indeed this incident seems to have afforded him more gratification than any in his travels except the following: “In Bristol, Uxbridge, Bridgewater, Taunton, Wellington, and other places, I amused myself in calling on some of my masters, with whom I had, about twenty years before, worked as a journeyman shoemaker. I addressed each with ‘Pray, sir, have you got any occasion?’ which is the term made use of by journeymen in that useful occupation, when seeking employment. Most of these honest men had quite forgotten my person, as many of them had not seen me since I worked for them; so that it is not easy for you to conceive with what surprize and astonishment they gazed on me. For you must know that I had the vanity (I call it humour) to do this in my chariot, attended by my servants; and on telling them who I was all appeared to be very happy to see me.”
James Lackington died in his country house in Budleigh Lutterton, in Devonshire, in 1815. His life is an eminent example how a man of no attainments or advantages can conquer success by sheer hard work and perseverance.
Lackington was not the only man of his time who perceived that the conditions of literature were displaying at least a chance of change; that the circle of the book-buying public was incessantly enlarging, and that, by supplying the best books at the cheapest remunerative rates, not only would the progress of education be accelerated, but that the very speculation would bring fortune as well as honour to the innovators in the Trade. One of the first booksellers to adopt this principle was John Bell, whose name is still preserved in Bell’s Weekly Messenger. His British Poets, British Theatre and Shakespeare, published in small pocket volumes, carried consternation into the trade, but scattered the English classics broadcast among the people. He was the first to discard the long s. He was soon rivalled by Cook and Harrison, and all three were distinguished, not only by publishing in little pocket volumes, exquisitely printed, and embellished by the best artists for the many, what had before been produced in folios and quartos for the few, but as the inventors of the “number trade,” by which even expensive works were sold in small weekly portions to those to whom literature had hitherto been an unknown luxury. Such were the Lives of Christ, The Histories of England, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, Family Bibles with Notes, and The Works of Flavius Josephus. Many of these “number books,” though of no great literary merit, exhibited every possible attraction on their copious title-pages, and were announced with the then novel terms of “beautiful,” “elegant,” “superb,” and “magnificent.”
Andrew Donaldson.
(From an Etching by Kay. 1789.)
