Rogue Publisher

Colburn’s main claim to rehabilitation are his troop of 'name' authors: Lady Morgan, Disraeli, Bulwer-Lytton, Captain Marryat, G.P.R James, Mrs. Margaret Oliphant, Mrs. Catherine Gore, Mrs. Caroline Norton, Frances Trollope, Anthony Trollope, Richard Cobbold, R. S. Surtees. Many would not have had a start in the careers they later enjoyed were it not for Colburn.

This is a lively, and important new work on early 19th-century publishing and the patterns for the century which Colburn set. It sketches in

tantalizing outlines the Regency, early nineteenth-century and Victorian book trades – and the consequences of Colburn’s impact on those worlds. In addition, the work centres on Colburn’s most celebrated authors. The book – which is well illustrated - contains the first catalogue of Colburn’s publications.

Thus far, literary and publishing history have drawn a formidable charge sheet against Henry Colburn. In personal pedigree he is slandered as a ‘guttersnipe’, or a ‘royal bastard’. In Disraeli’s pungent description he was a publishing ‘bawd’, engaged in wholesale literary prostitution. A very bad thing. And yet this publishing Barabbas can be argued to have been innovative and a force for constructive change in the rapidly evolving book trade and---paradoxically---a man of taste.

Various rumours circulated that he was either a bastard of the Duke of York or of Lord Landsdowne. Date uncertain. He liked to weave illustrious (typically mendacious) pedigrees for himself as much as for his dubiously aristocratic purveyors of silver forkery.

What, precisely, did Colburn do that should raise his reputation and make us see him as a good thing? In the largest sense he demonstrated, by example and practice, the need for consolidation between hitherto dismembered arms of the London book world. Beginning his career at apprentice level in the London West End circulating-library business he went on, having learned at the counter what the customer wanted, to become the undisputed market leader in the publication of three-volume novels and (sub-Murray) travel books.

The three-decker went on to become the foundation-stone of the ‘Leviathan’ library system (Mudie’s and Smith’s) and created a seventy-year stability in the publishing, distribution and reception of English fiction.

 In 1814 Colburn founded the New Monthly Magazine. In 1817, he set up England’s first serious weekly review, the Literary Gazette. In 1828 he helped found the Athenaeum (distant parent of today's New Statesman). His behaviour, as a magazine proprietor and editor at large was typically outrageous. But the link he forged between higher journalism and literature was momentous.

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

Preface: Who Was Henry Colburn?

1. Henry Colburn: The Charge Sheet

2. The Case for the Defence

3. Colburn’s Origins

4. Colburn’s Age and Birth: A Puzzle with Some Importance 

5. The Rise of Henry Colburn 

6. The 1812 Break into Independence

7. Fully Fledged

8. Magazinery

9. Colburn’s Business Practices Examined

10. Colburn among the Vampyres

11. The Literary Gazette

12. Magazinery without the Drama

13. The Prince of Puffers: A Defence

14. Crisis

15. The First Decade: Summary

16. Colburn’s Heyday

17. Saunders and Otley

18. The Great Crash: A Perverse Opportunity for Colburn 

19. Disraeli

20. Loyalty and Friendship

21. Jewels among the Silver Forks

22. A Digression 

23. Upcott and Colburn

24. Pepys

25. Richard Bentley, Publisher

26. ‘One of the Best Businesses in London’

27. Love and Business: A Digression

28. The Partnership 

29. Puff, Puff Together 

30. What the Partnership Achieved 

31. The Standard Novels: The Partnership’s Sole Monument 

32. Dissolution 

33. Breaking the Chain

34. Independence Regained

35. Old Publisher, Young England

36. Colburn’s Married Ladies 

37. Colburn’s Married Lady: At Home in Bryanston Square 

38. Losing the Battle 

39. Bacon and Bungay

40. Winding Up 

41. Short Retirement: Death and Legacy 

42. Bibliometric Conclusion: What the Numbers Tell Us

Afterword: ‘Henry Colburn, Esq., The Eminent Publisher’

Appendix 1: Bentley’s Unpublished Obituary

Appendix 2: Colburn’s Will

Appendix 3: The Colburn-Bentley Indenture

Appendix 4: Colburn Chronology 

Bibliography