Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/297

CHAMBERS, KNIGHT, AND CASSELL. 257 a document, which Mr. Knight values, he says, as a soldier values his first commission, reached him con- taining an offer of the superintendence of the Society's publications, an offer that was forthwith accepted. As a first step, the " Library of Entertaining Knowledge " was commenced, and, in 1828, he started the British Almanac, and the Companion to the Almanac a wonderful change for the better after the "Poor Robins " and " Old Moores " of the past. In 1832, Mr. Knight was offered an official position at the Board of Trade, but fortunately for the educa- tion and interests of the people he had the courage to refuse it, having the pleasure, however, of being asked to recommend some one else to the post. In the March of this year appeared the first number of the Penny Magazine, subsequent by only a very few weeks to Chambers' s Edinburgh Journal. The new periodical had been suggested by Mr. Hill in a conversation about the wretched character of the cheap prints of the period. " Let us," he exclaimed, " see what something cheap and good can accomplish ! Let us have a penny magazine !" " And what shall be the title ?" asked Knight. " The Penny Magazine" At once they went to the Lord Chancellor, who entered cordially into the project, and though a few old Whig gentlemen on the committee urged that the proposed price was below the dignity of the Society, and muttered, " It is very awkward, very awkward," Mr. Knight undertook the risk, and was immediately appointed editor. The success of the magazine was amazing even to the sanguine editor; at the close of 1832 it reached a sale of 200,000 in weekly and monthly parts repre- senting probably a million readers, and Burke had