Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/328

288 28B HENRY CO IB URN. shape of household chattels and newspaper shares, to liquidate his unfortunate debt, and his children were left penniless. A subscription was raised if literary men are improvident (though many have more excuses for improvidence than Theodore Hook), they are at least kindly-hearted and a sum of 3000 was col- lected, to which the King of Hanover contributed 500. As a strange test of Hook's joviality it is stated that the receipts of the dining-room of the Athenaeum Club fell off by 300 when his well- known seat in " Temperance Corner" became vacant. Another of the novelists with whom Colburn had long and intimate dealings was G. P. R. James, one of the most indefatigable writers that ever drove pen over paper. We give for the sake of clearness, a tabular statement of his extraordinary labours : 5 1 Novels in 3 Volumes 153 Volumes. 2 4 8 6 2 12 16 i 16 Edited Works 14 Miscellaneous Contributions would fill say 10 223 Volumes. Truly a gargantuan labour ! Some of James's early writings had attracted the attention of Wash- ington Irving, who strongly advised the undertaking of some more important work, and as a consequence " Richelieu" was commenced. After it had received Scott's approval it was submitted to Colburn, and published in 1828 with a success that determined the young author's future career. We cannot, of course, follow the progress of the 223 volumes as they issued from the press. It would be absurd to look for originality in a book-manufacturer of this calibre,