Sixty Years a Bookman, With Other Recollections and ReflectionsShaylor, Joseph
General
Sixty Years a Bookman, With Other Recollections and Reflections
Shaylor, Joseph
Booksellers and bookselling -- Great Britain; Shaylor, Joseph, 1844-1923
Another of the leading features of the trade was the immense sale
of Birthday Books, from Shakespeare to Tennyson. Every poet with a
reputation had a compilation made from his writings for which there
was always a receptive public. One of the most fascinating and lasting
of juvenile books popular at this time was "Alice's Adventures in
Wonderland." The larger part of the first edition of this book was sold
to an American publisher so that a second edition could be quickly
announced; that was probably a wise policy and helped to draw attention
to the value of the book.
During this and the following years, many authors had great reputations
which to-day have almost ceased. The books of most of them have
long been out of print, and are almost forgotten except by those who
lived during the middle of the nineteenth century. I would instance
"A.L.O.E.," who had some fifty books in circulation, the author of
"Mary Powell," who issued some twenty-four popular stories, the Rev.
J.C. Ryle, Hugh Miller, Mrs. Webb, William and Mary Howitt, Artemus
Ward, Mrs. Sewell, R.M. Ballantyne, Samuel Smiles, Miss Yonge, James
Grant, Mayne Reid, John Timbs, S. Baring-Gould, Mrs. Carey Brock,
Mrs. Gatty, and many others. Some of the novelists who have come to
stay had at this period very large sales. Among them, of course, were
Dickens, Thackeray, Scott, C. Kingsley, Miss Braddon, Anthony Trollope,
George Eliot, and others who, I think, laid a foundation which was very
helpful to our later novelists; but it is quite a question whether a
new departure is not now developing and that the novel of to-day deals
more particularly with the practical events of everyday life and the
effect they have upon the moral and spiritual development of the nation.
When Paternoster Square took the place of Newgate Market in 1872, it
was quite anticipated that this position would be occupied entirely
by publishers and thus form a centre for the trade, but at present
this hope has not been realized. During these years great changes took
place in Paternoster Row, many of the old buildings giving place to
new ones of greater architectural beauty. The following houses are
at the present time examples of the improvements which took place by
rebuilding: Longmans, Blackwoods, Nelsons, Aldine Chambers. Other
changes and improvements are in progress to-day. The Oxford University
Press took over the business of the Oxford Bible Warehouse, with what
success may be judged by its palatial buildings and business in Amen
Corner and Ave Maria Lane, to which it moved in 1883.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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