264
��NOTES BY THE WAY.
��Transferred
to A. & C.
Black.
Hodgson's commemora- tive booklet.
��Authors in 1807.
��Booksellers in 1807.
��John Murray.
��Joseph Butterworth.
��The Rivingtons.
��On the following 10th of May The, Athenaeum states, on the authority of The Scotsman, that the whole of the copyrights, stock, &c., of Scott's works have been transferred to Messrs. A. & C. Black.
Messrs. Hodgson in their commemorative booklet remind us that when their firm was founded many authors who have since taken their place
" in the highest realms of literature had not yet been given to the world ! Sheridan, Blake, Scott, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Landor, Lamb, De Quincey, and Jane Austen to mention only the more famous authors living in 1807 had but recently produced, or indeed were actually writing, those works which were to earn for them immortal fame. Byron, Shelley, Keats, Carlyle, Macaulay, and Borrow were then in early youth or childhood, while the great Victorian writers Fitz- Gerald, Tennyson, Browning, Ruskin, Thackeray, Dickens, and the Brontes were not yet born. In the world of art and book illustration Bartolozzi, Rowlandson, Gillray, Turner, Stothard and Smirke were producing those illustrations which have never since ceased to interest or charm, and some of which are now valued by the collector at many times the; prices obtained in 1807." Cruikshank was then only fifteen years of age.
A glance at a few of the London publishing houses of that date shows us Thomas Norton Longman the third, reigning at " The Black Swan " and " The Ship " in Paternoster Row, his firm, in addition to publishing, then engaging extensively in the old-book trade. A near neighbour of Edmund Hodgson, at 32, Fleet Street, was " a very excellent and gentlemanly man albeit a bookseller," and one of whom Scott wrote as " a young bookseller of capital and enterprise, and with more good sense and propriety of senti- ment than fall to the share of most of the trade."
This very excellent and gentlemanly man was John Murray the first, then twenty-five years of age. He had married the year previously Miss Elliot of Edinburgh, and among his publications was Scott's new poem ' Marmion,' of which he held a fourth share, which had been offered to him by Constable. Another near neigh- bour of Hodgson, at 43, Fleet Street, was Joseph Butterworth, the extensive publisher of law-books, and one of the founders of the British and Foreign Bible Society. It is curious to note that, in the old catalogues of the Hodgsons, solicitors whose libraries were sold anonymously were invariably described as " respectable " a practice which was discontinued about 1852, when the epithet " eminent " was generally adopted. Another firm of the time was the Rivingtons. In 1807 this was represented by Francis and Charles, the grandsons of the original founder ; they had not then moved into the handsome premises they occupied for many years at 3, Waterloo Place, opposite Smith & Elder's. James Nisbet, the founder of the Berners Street firm, came two years later (1809) ; he rigidly excluded every publication that was not of a religious character.
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