Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/290

252, so as to give him practical experience in reporting and other journalistic work; for from early boyhood he had determined to possess a paper of his own. On Aug. 1st of the same year his desire was realized, and, in conjunction with his father, he started the Windsor and Eton Express, the editorship of which he continued up to the year 1827, finding time, however, in the midst of his busy life, to devote to the cultivation of more general literature. In 1813 appeared the first original work from his pen, "Arminius," a tragedy—which had been offered to the manager of Drury Lane Theatre, and had of course been rejected, but very courteously. During his residence at Windsor he was co-editor, with H. E. Locker, of the Plain Englishman, a miscellaneous journal, which only lasted from 1820 to 1822.

His first venture into the dimly descried regions of popular literature appeared, he says, in the Windsor Express for Dec. 11, 1819, in a paper called "Cheap Publications," and was followed by others, till, in one of the last numbers of the Plain Englishman, we come across an article entitled "Diffusion of Useful Knowledge"—a straw which shows which way his mind was turning.

Among Mr. Knight's other literary labours at this time, in 1820, he undertook the editorship of the Guardian, again in partnership with a colleague; and his life, divided between Windsor and London, became one of very pleasurable excitement. His connection, too, with a literary journal, served to render him familiar with the aspects of the publishing trade in London, and at the end of 1822 he sold his share of the Guardian, and took up his position in Pall Mall East, and started as a publisher.