A History of Booksellers, the Old and the NewCurwen, Henry
History
A History of Booksellers, the Old and the New
Curwen, Henry
Book industries and trade -- Great Britain -- History; Booksellers and bookselling -- Great Britain -- History
Longman was himself indefatigable in business, for fifty years
unremittingly he came from and returned to Hampstead on horseback; but
as the rious branches of the trade clearly prove, the superintendence
of so vast a business was altogether beyond the power of any single
man; and perhaps nothing tended more to raise the firm to the eminent
position it soon attained than the plan of introducing fresh blood
from time to time;--the new members being often chosen on account of
the zeal and talent they had displayed as servants of the house. In
1804 Thomas Hurst, with the whole of his trade and connection, and
Cosmo Orme (the founder of the hospital for decayed booksellers) were
admitted. In 1811, Thomas Brown, whom we have already noticed as an
apprentice, became a member of the firm, and until his retirement
in 1859, took the sole management of the cash department, with so
regular and just a system that an author could always learn what was
coming to him, and when he was to receive it--a plan _not_ invariably
adopted in a publisher’s counting-house. The firm was in 1824 further
strengthened by the admission of Bevis Green, who had been apprenticed
to Hurst in 1807. The title of the firm at this, its best known, period
was, therefore, “Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green.” When,
however, Thomas Roberts entered, the title was changed to “Longman,
Green, Longman, Roberts, and Green;” but we are anticipating, for
Roberts died as recently as 1865, having acquired some distinction in
private life as a Numismatist. For the sake of convenience, and for the
sequence of the story, it will, perhaps, be as well to consider the
firm as represented, as in fact from his leading position it was by
Thomas Norton Longman, touching only upon the others individually when
some directly personal interest arises. Before all these partnerships,
however, were accomplished facts Longman had taken a much more
precious, and even more zealous partner in the person of Miss Mary
Slater of Horsham, Sussex, whom he had married as far back as the 2nd
July, 1799.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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