Holborn is an additionally interesting book-locality from the fact that it was from here that some of the first book-catalogues were issued. This important innovation owes much to Charles Davis, whose shop was 'against Gray's Inn.' The earliest of these catalogues which we have seen is a very interesting list of 168 pages octavo, and includes 'valuable libraries, lately purchased, containing near 12,000 volumes in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, and English,' 'which will be sold very cheap, the lowest price fix'd in each book, on Thursday, May 7, 1747.' The list is in many respects very curious, not the least of which is that not one of the items offered is priced. One of the facts which strike one most forcibly in this connection is the large capitals which must have been sunk in books even at this early period. Davis, like all the other booksellers--notably Tonson and Lintot--of that period, was a bookseller as well as publisher. [Illustration: _Interior of Darton's Shop, Holborn Hill._] Moving further westward, we find records of bookselling for just a couple of centuries back. Robert Kettlewell was established at the Hand and Sceptre, King's Street, Bloomsbury, whence he issued his kinsman's apparently useful, and certainly very dull, pamphlet, entitled 'Death Made Comfortable; or, The Way to Die Well,' and sold a variety of other books besides. Making a leap of nearly a century, we meet with Samuel Hayes, of Oxford Street, and evidently a relative of John Hayes, to whom we have already referred. Samuel Hayes--when not in a French prison, for he was actually incarcerated by Napoleon when on a visit to France--was at this place of business for sixteen years, 1779 to 1795, and published several catalogues. Isaac Herbert, nephew of the editor of Ames' 'Typographical Antiquities,' was selling books in Great Russell Street in and about 1795; Joseph Bell was established as a bookseller in Oxford Street in the earlier part of the present century; Shepperson and Reynolds were in the same thoroughfare from 1784 to 1793, and sold several very good libraries within the period indicated. Writing in 1790, Pennant mentions that the chapel of Southampton, or Bedford House, Bloomsbury, was at that time rented by Lockyer Davis as a magazine of books. How long it had been in Davis's tenancy is not certain, but he died in 1791. William Davis, the author of several interesting bibliographical books, including two 'Journeys Round the Library of a Bibliomaniac,' was at the Bedford Library, Southampton Row, Holborn, during the early part of the century. Name after name might be quoted if any useful purpose would be served. [Illustration: _James Westell's, 114, Oxford Street._]