Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Lowndes, William Thomas
LOWNDES, WILLIAM THOMAS (d. 1843), bibliographer, son of William Lowndes, a well-known bookseller in the Strand, London, was born about 1798. His grandfather, also a bookseller, was supposed to be the original of Briggs in Miss Burney's ‘Cecilia.’ In 1820 he began to compile his chief and valuable work, ‘The Bibliographer's Manual,’ the first edition of which, published in four volumes by Pickering, is dated 1 Jan. 1834. Though the first systematic work of its kind in England, it brought Lowndes neither notice nor money. He passed the latter part of his life in drudgery and complete poverty, acting, in his last years, as cataloguer to Henry George Bohn [q. v.], who re-edited his ‘Manual’ in four volumes, 1857–64. In 1839 he published parts i–v. of ‘The British Librarian,’ designed to supplement the defective treatment of theology in the ‘Manual;’ pt. vii. was, through illness, issued incomplete; pt. ix. was delayed by illness and failing sight; pt. xi., the last issued, in which the subject of class I, ‘Religion and its History,’ is still unfinished, was also delayed, not appearing till 1842. But his health was broken, and his mind deranged. He died on 31 July 1843. He left a widow and two children.
[Bohn's edition of the Bibliographer's Manual, App. 1864, Pref. pp. iv–v; Gent. Mag. 1843, pt. ii. p. 326; Bibliographer's Manual, 1834, Pref. p. xii; Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, 1812, iii. 646–7; Notes and Queries, 6th ser. i. 129, 182, 3rd ser. iii. 47, 98, 218; private information from Mr. Bernard Quaritch.]