Already in the first few years of the century we find the house connected with Wordsworth, Southey, Coleridge, and Scott, but it was by no means entirely to poetry that Longman and Rees trusted. In 1799 they purchased the copyright of Lindley Murray’s _English Grammar_, one of the most profitable school books ever issued from the press--for many years the annual sale of the _Abridgment_ in England alone was from 48,000 to 50,000 copies. Chambers’ _Cyclopædia_ was entirely re-written, re-cast, and re-christened, and again, under the management of Abraham Rees, after whom it was named, came out in quarto form in parts, but at a total cost of £85. The ablest scientific and technical writers of the day were retained, and among them we find the names of Humphry Davy, John Abernethy, Sharon Turner, John Flaxman, and Henry Brougham. For the first twenty years of this century Rees’ _New Cyclopædia_ filled the place that the _Encyclopædia Britannica_--“a Scots rival in little esteem”--was afterwards to occupy. In 1803, we find the trade catalogue has extended so much in bulk and character that it is divided into no less than twenty-two classes. Among their books we note Paley’s _Natural Theology_ (ten editions published in seven years), Sharon Turner’s _Anglo-Saxon History_, Pinkerton’s _Geography_, Cowper’s _Homer_, and Gifford’s _Juvenal_. About this time too, they engaged very extensively in the old book trade, a branch of the business discarded about the year 1840. In a catalogue of the year 1811 we find some very curious books. Here are the celebrated _Roxburgh Ballads_, now in the British Museum; a Pennant’s _London_, marked £300; a Granger’s _Biographical Dictionary_, £750; Pilkington’s _Dictionary of Painters_, £420; two volumes of _Cromwelliana_, £250; an extraordinary assemblage of Caxtons, Wynkyn de Wordes, and other early printed books, one supposed to date from 1446; a unique assemblage of _Garrickiana_, and many other articles of a matchless character.[9]