The step from fifth-rate book-making to second-hand bookselling is not a great one, and just as Holywell Street sheltered the Grub-writers of half a century ago, so Drury Lane and its immediate vicinity was their recognised locality in the earlier part of the last century. It is impossible to associate respectability, to say nothing of fashion, with this evil-smelling, squalid thoroughfare. And yet there can be no question about its having been at one time an aristocratic quarter. Until within the last few years, the Lane itself, and its numerous tributaries, contained many second-hand bookshops. The most celebrated, and, indeed, almost the only one of any interest, was Andrew Jackson, who made a speciality of old and black-letter books. Nichols tells us that for more than forty years he kept a shop in Clare Market, and here, 'like another Magliabecchi, midst dust and cobwebs, he indulged his appetite for reading; legends and romances, history and poetry, were indiscriminately his favourite pursuits.' In 1740 he published the first book of 'Paradise Lost' in rhyme, and ten years afterwards a number of modernizations from Chaucer. The contents of his catalogues of the years 1756, 1757, 1759, and one without date, were in rhyme. He retired in 1777, and died in July, 1778, in the eighty-fourth year of his age. Charles Marsh, another literary bookseller, was for some time a friend and neighbour of Jackson's. Marsh (who afterwards removed to a shop now swallowed by the improvements in Northumberland Avenue, Charing Cross) was situated at Cicero's Head, in New Round Court, off the Strand, and is described by one who knew him as being afflicted with 'a very unhappy temper, and withal very proud and insolent, with a plentiful share of conceit.' He wrote a poem entitled 'The Library, an Epistle from a Bookseller to a Gentleman, his Customer; desiring him to discharge his bill,' 1766. He was originally a church-clerk. The only catalogue of this celebrity which we have seen is a bulky one, over 100 pages octavo, enumerating 3,000 books, 'among which are included the libraries of the Rev. Mr. Gilbert Burnet, Minister of Clerkenwell, and an eminent apothecary, both lately deceased.' The date is May 7, 1747. Some of the prices in this catalogue can only be described as absurd; for example, Lydgate's 'Bochas; or, The Fall of Princes,' 1517, 5s.; a collection of old plays and poems, two volumes, 1592, 6s.; Tusser's 'Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry,' 1574, 2s. 6d.; and black-letter books by the score are here offered at sums from one to three or four shillings each. The neighbourhood has for many years ceased to be a bookselling locality, for although book-hunters prefer side-streets and quiet thoroughfares for the prosecution of their hobby, the pestiferous vapours of Drury Lane would kill any bibliopolic growth more vigorous than a newsvendor's shop.
When, by slow degrees, the various trades moved in a direction west of Temple Bar, it was only natural that the trade in second-hand books should be similarly attracted. The Strand itself, which, at the end of the last century and beginning of the present, was a much narrower street than it is now, is not, and never has been, a great book-emporium, for a reason which we have more than once pointed out. But the immediate vicinity has been for over a century and a half, as it still continues to be, the favourite locality of some of the chief booksellers. To-day the Strand proper only contains three representatives, in Messrs. H. Sotheran and Co., the finer of whose two shops is in Piccadilly, and Mr. David Nutt (both of whom are, however, vendors of new books, and often act as publishers), and Messrs. Walford. Within a stone's-throw of the main thoroughfare we have John Galwey and Suckling and Galloway, Garrick Street; James Gunn and Nattali, Bedford Street; B. F. Stevens, Trafalgar Square; H. Fawcett, King Street; W. Wesley and Sons, Essex Street; and many others. One of the most interesting incidents in connection with the Strand relates to a house which stood between Arundel and Norfolk Streets, where, at the end of the seventeenth century, lived the father of Bishop Burnet. 'This house,' says Dr. Hughson, writing in 1810, 'continued in the Burnet family till within living memory, being possessed by a bookseller of the same name—a collateral descendant of the Bishop.' Of much more importance, however, is the fact that at 132, Strand a bookseller named Wright started, about 1730, the first circulating library in London. About ten years afterwards he was succeeded by William Bathoe ('a very intelligent bookseller' who died in October, 1768), who carried on the circulating library in addition to bookselling. Bathoe was a book-auctioneer as well as a retail vendor; he sold the books of 'William Hogarth, Esq., sergeant-painter,' under the hammer. In or about the year 1747 he had established himself 'in Church Lane, near St. Martin's Church in the Strand, almost opposite York Buildings,' whence he issued a thirty-eight-paged (octavo) catalogue, comprising the 'valuable library of the learned James Thompson Esq., deceased, with the collection of a gentleman lately gone abroad'; this list enumerates nearly 1,000 items, the prices, ranging from 6d. upwards, being uniformly low. Walton's 'Compleat Angler,' 1661, 'with neat cuts,' would not be long unsold at 3s. 6d.; and the same may be said of Purchas's 'Pilgrimage,' 1617, 2s. 6d.; of Rochester's complete poems at 2s.; and very many others. At 'No. 18 in the Strand' lived J. Mathews, the bookseller, and father of Charles Mathews, the actor; and in this house the latter was born. Jacob Tonson was at 'Shakespeare's Head, over against Catherine Street, in the Strand,' now 141; the house, since rebuilt, was afterwards occupied by Andrew Millar, who deposed Shakespeare, and erected Buchanan's Head instead. Millar was succeeded by his friend and apprentice, Thomas Cadell (who became a partner in 1765), in 1767; he retired in 1793. Cadell's son then became head of the concern, and took William Davies into partnership. The firm of Cadell and Davies existed until the death of the latter in 1820, after which Cadell (the Opulent Bookseller of Beloe) continued it in his own name until his death in 1836. Samuel Bagster; Whitmore and Fenn; J. Walter (an apprentice of Robert Dodsley, and the founder of the Times); William Brown (an apprentice of Sandby), Essex Street, who died in 1797, and who was succeeded by Robert Bickerstaff; Henry Chapman, Chandos Street, 1790-1795; W. Lowndes; and Walter Wilson, of the Mews Gate, were Strand booksellers of more or less note during the latter part of the last, and the earlier part of the present, century.
CHARING CROSS AND NEIGHBOURHOOD.
John Millan was one of the most famous of Charing Cross or Whitehall booksellers, for he was located here for over half a century, dying in 1784, aged over eighty-one years. Richard Gough drew the following picture of Millan's shop in March, 1772: 'On my return from Westminster last night, I penetrated the utmost recesses of Millan's shop, which, if I may borrow an idea from natural history, is incrusted with literature and curiosities like so many stalactitical exudations. Through a narrow alley, between piles of books, I reached a cell, or adytum, whose sides were so completely cased with the same supellex that the fireplace was literally enchâsse dans la muraille. In this cell sat the deity of the place, at the head of a whist party, which was interrupted by my inquiry after Dillenius in sheets. The answer was, he "had none in sheets or blankets." . . . I emerged from this shop, which I consider as a future Herculaneum, where we shall hereafter root out many scarce things now rotting on the floor, considerably sunk below the level of the new pavement.' Millan was succeeded by Thomas and John Egerton, the latter being 'a bookseller of great eminence'—the Black-letter Bookseller of Beloe—whose death occurred in 1795. 'It was in his time,' says Beloe, 'that Old English books, of a particular description both in prose and verse, were, for some cause or other—principally, perhaps, as they were of use in the illustration of Shakespeare—beginning to assume a new dignity and importance, and to increase in value at the rate of 500 per cent.' Another Charing Cross bookseller, Samuel Leacroft (who succeeded Charles Marsh), died in 1795, and it is rather curious that John Egerton was a son-in-law of Lockyer Davis, whilst his neighbour was an apprentice.
Of Samuel Baker, whose shop was in Russell Street, Covent Garden, we have already spoken in our account of book-auctioneers. One of his early—May, 1747—catalogues (not auction) comprises the libraries of Dr. Robert Uvedale, and of this divine's son and namesake, also a D.D., of Enfield; it enumerates over 3,000 items. Thomas Becket (an apprentice of Millar, and Sterne's first publisher) and P. De Hondt were successful Strand booksellers; the former finally settled himself in Pall Mall, and was one of the first to make a speciality of foreign books, of which he imported large quantities between 1761 and 1766. C. Heydinger, of the Strand, was a German bookseller who issued catalogues from 1771 to 1773, and who died in distressed circumstances about 1778. Henry Lasher Gardner, who died at a very advanced age in 1808, was a venerable bookseller, whose shop was opposite St. Clement's Church, Strand; he published catalogues between 1786 and 1793. William Otridge, at first alone, and afterwards in partnership with his son, issued catalogues from the Strand during the last quarter of the last century. In 1796 Joseph Pote was selling books at the Golden Door, over against Suffolk Street, Charing Cross. John Nourse (died 1780), bookseller to his Majesty, was another celebrated bibliopole of the Strand, and is described by John Nichols as 'a man of science, particularly in the mathematical line.' Francis Wingrave succeeded Nourse.
