Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/188

154 154 CONSTABLE, CADELL, AND BLACK. from his advanced years, all hope was given up of the collected works ever appearing under the superin- tendence of the author. In the year 1845, the well-known periodical, Hoggs Instructor, was started under the manage- ment and sole responsibility of Mr. Hogg. Sixteen volumes of the Instructor as a weekly serial were published, and among many other contributors of note was the " Opium-Eater," and from the commence- ment of their intercourse De Ouincey and Mr. Hogg became firm friends. About this time several volumes of De Quincey's writings had been collected and published by Messrs. Ticknor and Fields, of Boston, U.S., without, of course, the advantage of the author's own revisal; and, as the papers had been originally hurriedly written for magazines, and as, during the lapse of time, many changes had become unavoidable, the author felt that, in justice to himself, extensive addi- tions and, in some cases, suppressions were necessary. Arrangements were accordingly entered into for bringing out the collected works at home in a thoroughly revised and amended form, Mr. Hogg undertaking all the responsibility, and engaging to give his aid both in collecting the materials, and in generally seeing the volumes through the press. On the announcement of the publication it was confidently predicted by some of those who had been engaged in the previous attempts that not a single volume would ever appear. In order to afford ample time for the thorough revision of the work it was arranged that the publication should be spread over three years. The first volume appeared in 1853; but, instead of three years bringing the series to a close, eight years