Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/111

81 THE L ONGMAtf FA MIL Y. 8 1 and J. Innes, at the West End of St. Paul's Church- yard, J. Osborn, at the Oxford Arms, in Lombard Street, and T. Longman, at the Ship and Black Swan, in Paternoster Row." In a few months after this Osborn followed his daughter to the Row, and, adding his capital to that of his son-in-law, remained in partnership with him until the end of his days. In 1/26, we find their names conjointly prefixed to the first edition of Sherlock's Voyages, and between that date and 1730 to a great variety of school books. All the works of importance, many even of the minor books, were, at that time, published not only by subscription in the first instance, but the remain- ing risk, and the trouble of a pretty certain venture, were divided amongst a number of booksellers : and the share system was so general that in the books of the Stationers' Company there is a column ruled off, before the entries of the titles of works and marked " Shares," and subdivided into halves, eight-twelfths, sixteenths, twenty-fourths, and even sixty-fourths. Much of the speculative portion of a bookseller's business in those days consisted, therefore, not in the original publication of books, but in the purchase and sale of their shares, and to this business we find that Thomas Longman was especially addicted. As early as November, 1724, he bought one-third of the Delphin Virgil from Jacob Tonson, junior; in 1728 a twenti- eth of Ainsworth's Latin Dictionary, one of the most profitable books of the last century, for forty pounds, and, much later on, one fourth part of the Arabian Nights 1 Entertainment for the small sum of twelve pounds. The chief interest of the career of the house at this period lies in their connection with the Cyclopedia of