James Lackington

James Lackington (around 1794)

"Temple of the muses" from the Jones & Co bookstore (1828)

Satire on the Finsbury Square Heroes and His Marriage (1795)

James Lackington (born August 31, 1746 in Wellington , Somerset ; died November 22, 1815 in Budleigh Salterton ) was a British bookseller.

Life

James Lackington was the oldest child in a shoemaker's family of thirteen. He only learned to read during his apprenticeship and to write later, but afterwards he began to be interested in books in Bristol . In 1773 he moved to London and worked in the book trade from 1774.

Lackington introduced new methods in the book trade and was able to reduce prices by eliminating the purchase on credit. In 1779 he published an inventory catalog for 12,000 books, catalogs from 1786 with 20,000 and from 1793 with 100,000 books (individual volumes, not titles) have also been preserved. At that time, the booksellers organized in the "London Stationers' Company" maintained the market if the print runs were too large and unsaleable, by making their surplus books waste or using the high-quality paper and leather covers for other purposes. Lackington broke through this cartel after 1780 by buying up such book stocks and thrown them on the market at low prices, making him a pioneer of the bookseller's shop ( modern antiquarian bookshop ), but also praising himself for the fact that he actually owned something expensive due to the low prices made books for poorer people possible. In the end, he advertised that he had 200,000 books in stock, increased his sales to 100,000 books a year, and the profit of his book trade in 1792 was £ 5,000. He put the slogan Small profits do great things on his carriage . In 1794 he brought out tokens worth a penny and a halfpenny, each with his own likeness; 700,000 coins were minted.

In this way he was able to move successfully in 1794 to the office building built in 1789 on Finsbury Square , which he called "Temple of the Muses". In 1798 he left the business to his successor George Lackington, who was a distant relative.

Lackington published two autobiographical writings: the Memoirs of the First Forty-Five Years of the Life of James Lackington in 1791 and The Confessions of James Lackington in 1804, as well as letters as an appendix , on the bad consequences of having daughters educated at Boarding Schools . Lackington turned back to the Methodist Church in old age .

Works (selection)

• Memoirs of the forty-five first years of the life of J. Lackington, bookseller, Finsbury-Square, London: in forty-seven letters to a friend . Bristol: Lackington, 1791
  • James Lackington; Johann Gottlieb Herold; Andreas Stötterup: Anecdotes from the still living bookseller James Lackingston [sic]: whom the love of reading evolved from a shoemaker to one of the richest booksellers in England . Hamburg: At JG Herold, 1795 (reprint 1933)
• The confessions of J. Lackington in a series of letters to a friend, to which are added two letters on the bad consequences of having daughters educated at boarding schools . 1804
• The life of James Lackington, bookseller, 1746-1815 . Introduction by Peter Hopkins. Murder: Merton Historical Society, 2004.
• Second part of Lackington catalog for 1786. consisting of above twenty thousand volumes, in various languages ​​and classes of learning, including some valuable libraries purchased since October. With many modern publications, many in elegant bindings. The whole are selling at the extreme low prices which are printed in this second part, and marked in every book, by J. Lackington, at his shop, n ° 46 and 47, Chiswell-street, Moorfields, London . London, J. Lackington, 1786
• Lackington's catalog for 1793: consisting of above one hundred thousand volumes, in various languages ​​and classes of learning .... by J. Lackington, at his shop, no. 46 and 47, Chiswell-Street, Moorfields, London . 1793

literature

• Brenda J. Scragg: Lackington, James (1746-1815), bookseller and publisher. In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , from the earliest times to the year 2000 (ODNB). Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861411-X , ( oxforddnb.com license required ), as of October 2007
• William Edward Winks: Lives of illustrious shoemakers . New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1882, pp. 29–52
• Peregrine Pindar Gent [pseudonym]: Ode to the Hero of Finsbury Square . Congratulatory on His Late Mariage, and Illustrative of His Genius as His Own Biographer: With Notes Referential. London: I. Herbert, 1795

Web links

• Literature by and about James Lackington in the catalog of the German National Library
• Temple of the Muses. The biggest and cheapest bookshop in the (18th century) world , Blog (en)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ In the literature on Lackington, the biographical information is based on Lackingtons autobiographical writings, which were embellished by the author and were already described by contemporaries as "complacent" (Brenda J. Scragg).
2. ↑ Caspar Hirschi ; Carlos Spoerhase : Bibliophile Buchzerstörer , in: NZZ , June 22, 2013, p. 26.
   In William Hogarth's engraving Beer Street , a bundle of books is intended for a bag maker who used the paper as filler material in the manufacture of his suitcase. See the Beer street stitch
3. ↑ Brenda J. Scragg: Lackington, James , ODNB, 2007
4. ↑ The house burned down in 1841