Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/113

83 THE L ONGMAN FA MIL Y. 83 In 1/46 he took into partnership one Thomas Shenrell; but, except for the fact that this name figures in con- junction with his for the two following years, then to disappear for ever, little more is known. In 1754, however, he took a nephew into partnership, after which the title-pages of their works ran : " Printed for T. and T. Longman at the Ship in Pater-Noster-Row." Before this, however, he is to be found acting in unison with Dodsley, Millar, and other great publishers of the day, in the issue of such important works as Dr. Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language. On the loth of June, 1855, only two months after the publication of the dictionary, he died, and Johnson is obliged to put off his well- earned holiday-trip to Oxford. " Since my promise two of our partners are dead (Paul Knapton was the second) and I was solicited to suspend my excursion till we could recover from our confusion. Thomas Longman the first had no children, and left half the partnership stock to his nephew and namesake, the rest of the property going to his widow." Thomas Longman, the nephew, was born in 1731, and, at the age of fifteen, entered the publishing firm as an apprentice, and at the date of his uncle's death was only five-and-twenty. Under his management the old traditions were kept up more copyrights of standard books were purchased, the country trade extended, and more than this the business relations of the house were very vastly increased in the American colonies. One of Osborn's earliest books, by-the-way, had been entered at Stationers' Hall in 1712 as Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs of the Old and New Testament. For the edification and comfort of the Saints in PitUic and.