Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/346

306 3o6 THE RIVINGTONS, TtfE PARKERS, " Familiar Letters to and from several Persons upon Business and other Subjects," for on his death he left a mourning ring to James Rivington. During Dodsley's illness, Rivington and his sons managed the Annual Register, and when on his death it was sold to Orridge and others, they started an annual of their own, which lasted till 1812, and then till 1820 was in abeyance, resumed again till 1823, and in the following year the two were merged into one, and after being published for a few years by the Baldwins, its management returned again to their own hands. Through the Register they were brought into connection with Burke, and were subsequently publishers of his more important works. At all times the Rivingtons took a very great in- terest in the Stationers' Company ; this was especially the case with James, who served as master, and at the same time he, his two brothers, and his four sons were all members of the livery. He held many public appointments, was in commission of the peace, a governor of most of the Royal hospitals, and a director of the " Amicable Society," and of the Union Fire Office. He died, universally regretted, on the i6th of Feb- ruary, 1792, in his seventy-second year, and was followed by his widow in the succeeding October. Owing to the split we have referred to in his business, and to his uniform generosity, the fortune he left behind him was not large indeed, money hoarding has been an attribute of none of the Riving- ton family. His two elder sons, Francis and Charles, carried on the business vigorously. Another son, Robert, cap- tain of the " Kent "East Indiaman fell, gallantly