Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/480

438 438 ROUTLEDGE AND SONS. and in 1845 Mr. Routledge moved to larger premises in Soho Square, and in 1848 Mr. William Warne, his brother-in-law, and for long his assistant, was admitted into partnership, being joined by Mr. F. Warne, three years later, when the firm moved again to Farringdon Street. While at Soho Square, the publications of Messrs. Routledge and Warne had consisted chiefly of reprints, and here the remainder trade had been vastly ex- tended, but now they began to enter into direct dealings with noted authors on a scale that fully equalled the transactions of the first publishing firms. Perhaps the boldest of their early ventures was the offer of 20,000 to Sir E. Bulwer Lytton for the right of issuing a cheap series of his works for the term often years, from 1853 1863. In spite of the enormous outlay they were very willing, on the expiry of the time, to take a fresh lease of the popular volumes ; so that an offer originally deemed by the trade to be Quixotic, if not ruinous, must have reaped the success that its liberality and boldness deserved ; and by their association with Sir E. Bulwer Lytton, a great prestige was at once acquired. Similar arrange- ments were made with other distinguished novelists, nearly all of whom we have met before in our pre- vious article on Colburn Mr. G. P. R. James, Mr. Disraeli, Mr. Harrison Ainsworth, and Mr. Howard Russell ; while these successful re-issues were quickly followed by the publication of original works by Mayne Reed, Grant, and others, and by the first English edition of many of Prescott's and Long- fellow's productions. The various popular series known as the " Railway Library," the " Popular Library," &c., comprising