A History of Booksellers, the Old and the New

by Henry Curwen

For the whole of the seventeenth century the Longman family occupied the position of thriving citizens in the busy seaport town of Bristol, then the Liverpool of the day, and acquired some considerable wealth in the manufacture of soap and sugar, achieving in many instances the highest honours in civic authority. Ezekiel Longman, who is described as “of Bristol, gentleman,” died in the year 1708, leaving, by a second marriage, a little boy only nine years of age, who, as Thomas Longman, is afterwards to be the founder of the great Paternoster Row firm.

By a provision of his father’s will, Thomas was to be “well and handsomely bred and educated according to his fortune;” this, we presume, was duly accomplished, and in June, 1716, we find that he was bound apprentice for seven years to Mr. John Osborn, bookseller, of Lombard Street, London—a man in a good, substantial way of business, but not to be confused with the other Osbornes of the time. Unlike Jacob, Longman served his seven years, and reaped a due reward in the person of his master’s daughter; and, as at the expiry of his time, the house of William Taylor (known to fame as the publisher of Robinson Crusoe) had lost its chief, Osborn being appointed executor for the family, we find that in August, 1824 “all the household goods and books bound in sheets” according to valuation were purchased by Longman for £2,282 9s. 6d.—a very considerable sum in those days, and, towards the end of the month, £230 18s. was further paid for part shares in several profitable copyrights.

In acquiring this business Longman took possession of two houses, both ancient in the trade, the Black Swan and the Ship, which, through the profitable returns of Robinson Crusoe, Taylor had amalgamated into one; and here on the self-same freehold ground, the immense publishing establishment of the modern Longmans is still standing.

The first trade mention we find of his name occurs in a prospectus dated Oct., 1724, of a proposal to publish, by subscription, The Works of the Honourable Robert Boyle, Esq. (the father of chemistry, and brother of the Earl of Cork), “to be printed for W. and J. Innes, at the West End of St. Paul’s Churchyard, J. Osborn, at the Oxford Arms, in Lombard Street, and T. Longman, at the Ship and Black Swan, in Paternoster Row.” In a few months after this Osborn followed his daughter to the Row, and, adding his capital to that of his son-in-law, remained in partnership with him until the end of his days.

In 1726, we find their names conjointly prefixed to the first edition of Sherlock’s Voyages, and between that date and 1730 to a great variety of school books.

All the works of importance, many even of the minor books, were, at that time, published not only by subscription in the first instance, but the remaining risk, and the trouble of a pretty certain venture, were divided amongst a number of booksellers: and the share system was so general that in the books of the Stationers’ Company there is a column ruled off, before the entries of the titles of works and marked “Shares,” and subdivided into halves, eight-twelfths, sixteenths, twenty-fourths, and even sixty-fourths. Much of the speculative portion of a bookseller’s business in those days consisted, therefore, not in the original publication of books, but in the purchase and sale of their shares, and to this business we find that Thomas Longman was especially addicted. As early as November, 1724, he bought one-third of the Delphin Virgil from Jacob Tonson, junior; in 1728 a twentieth of Ainsworth’s Latin Dictionary, one of the most profitable books of the last century, for forty pounds, and, much later on, one-fourth part of the Arabian Nights’ Entertainment for the small sum of twelve pounds.

The chief interest of the career of the house at this period lies in their connection with the Cyclopædia of Ephraim Chambers, which was not only the parent of all our English encyclopædias, but also the direct cause of the famous Encyclopédie of the French philosophers. Longman’s share in this work, first published in 1728, cost but fifty pounds, and consisted, probably, only of one sixty-fourth portion; as, however, the proprietors died off, Longman steadily purchased all the shares that were thrown on the book-market, until, in the year 1740, the Stationers’ book assigns him eleven out of the sixty-four—a larger number than was ever held by any other proprietor.

One of the few direct allusions to Longman’s personal character relates to his kindness to Ephraim Chambers. A contemporary writes in the Gentleman’s Magazine:—“Mr. Longman used him with the liberality of a prince, and the kindness of a father; even his natural absence of mind was consulted, and during his illness jellies and other proper refreshments were industriously left for him at those places where it was least likely that he should avoid seeing them.” Chambers had received £500 over and above the stipulated price for this great work, and towards the latter end of his life was never absolutely in want of money; yet from forgetfulness, perhaps from custom, he was parsimonious in the extreme. A friend called one day at his chambers in Gray’s Inn, and was pressed to stay dinner. “And what will you give me, Ephraim?” asked the guest; “I dare engage you have nothing for dinner!” To which Mr. Chambers calmly replied, “Yes, I have a fritter, and if you’ll stay with me I’ll have two.”

After the death of his partner and father-in-law, who bequeathed him all his books and property, Thomas Longman seems to have prospered amazingly. In 1746 he took into partnership one Thomas Shenrell; but, except for the fact that this name figures in conjunction with his for the two following years, then to disappear for ever, little more is known. In 1754, however, he took a nephew into partnership, after which the title-pages of their works ran:—“Printed for T. and T. Longman at the Ship in Pater-Noster-Row.” Before this, however, he is to be found acting in unison with Dodsley, Millar, and other great publishers of the day, in the issue of such important works as Dr. Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language. On the 10th of June, 1855, only two months after the publication of the dictionary, he died, and Johnson is obliged to put off his well-earned holiday-trip to Oxford. “Since my promise two of our partners are dead (Paul Knapton was the second) and I was solicited to suspend my excursion till we could recover from our confusion. Thomas Longman the first had no children, and left half the partnership stock to his nephew and namesake, the rest of the property going to his widow.”

Thomas Longman, the nephew, was born in 1731, and, at the age of fifteen, entered the publishing firm as an apprentice, and at the date of his uncle’s death was only five-and-twenty.