Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/499

457 PROVINCIAL BOOKSELLERS. 457 Another well-known Liverpool bookseller was " Dandy ' J Cruikshank, of Castle Street, who main- tained that he was the handsomest man in England, and whose vanity extended to his trade, for his specialities were books bound in pink and orange. At the present time there are about sixty booksellers in Liverpool ; and Mr. Edward Howell, an apprentice of Johnson's, possesses the largest stock, consisting of 100,000 volumes, and is known also as a religious publisher. Mr. Philip, another leading bookseller, has two establishments in Liverpool, and a branch house in London, while Mr. Cornish, of Holborn, has an establishment in Liverpool, as well as in Dublin. Crossing the Channel for a moment, we have an opportunity of saying something of the Dublin book- sellers ; but we shall not be detained long, as, in this branch of industry, the Irish capital presents a striking contrast to the Scottish. In the interval between the cessation of the licensing system and the Copyright Act of the 8th Anne, there was no legal protection for literary property, and book-pirates consequently abounded. One of the tribe has been celebrated by Dunton : " Mr. Lee, in Lombard Street such a pirate, such a cormorant never was before copies, books, men, ships, all was one ; he held no propriety, right or wrong, good or bad, till at last he began to be known ; and the booksellers, not enduring so ill a man among them, to disgrace them, spewed him out, and off he marched for Ireland, where he acted as felonious Lee (!) as he did in London." There, however, till the Act of Union, in 1801, book-pirates abounded, greatly to the discouragement of native talent, and even of native industry, for Gent tells us repeatedly that it was almost impossible for a journey- 29