Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/501

PROVINCIAL BOOKSELLERS. 45$ Ushers, complaining of state interference with the ordinary and commercial laws of bookselling, and to trials for infringement of copyright. However, in the long-run the Irish Commissioners were successful, and Mr. Longman, one of the complainants, eventually accepted their English agency. Besides his connec- tion with the Commission, Mr. Thorn has acquired a reputation in the Bookselling world by his excellent " Irish Almanac," which, till recently, was unrivalled by the English almanacs of any London firms. Latterly, however, Irish bookselling, as far as individual enterprize goes, has been commonly asso- ciated with the name of James Duffy. He was born in 1809, and after being apprenticed to a draper in the country, found employment in Dublin, and here, like Robert Chambers, he invested his spare coppers in picking up old books. At last he found trade so bad that he determined to emigrate, and accordingly, as he possessed no funds, he took his books to an auctioneer ; at the sale, to his surprise, he found that the books he had purchased for pence, now produced as many shillings. Upon this he determined to drop the scheme of emigration, and to turn bookseller. As we have before mentioned, he collected the Bibles which the Catholics received from the Church of England propagandists only to turn into money, and took them over to Liverpool, where he exchanged them for books less unlawful in Papist eyes. At first he hawked these about the country, but eventually took a place of business in Anglesea Street, Dublin, and there began to publish the "Bruton Series" of thrilling tales of robbers, battles, adventures, and the like, at the low price of two-pence each. In 1842 he was appointed bookseller to the Repeal Agitators, 29 2