Introduction to The Old Booksellers of New York and other papers
- By Bruce McKinney
The Old Booksellers of New York and other Papers by William Loring Andrews. 1895
The Old Booksellers of New York and other papers
By William Loring Andrews
Introduced by Bruce McKinney
The full text of this book can be reached through this link.
This book, published in 1895, contains three primary essays:
The Old Booksellers of New York;
William Gowans
Joseph Sabin
John Bradburn and others
The First Illustrated Magazine Published in New York
The Early American Almanac
If you enjoy the minutia of book selling you’ll enjoy reading The Old Booksellers of New York and Other Papers, a brief (15,000 words or about one hour to read) account of some of the most important New York booksellers of the 19th century. It is written by William Loring Andrews and was published in 1895 when it was still possible to have known many of these men, and it was only men, first hand. The dealers he writes about are William Gowans, Joseph Sabin, John Bradburn and a small group of lesser lights whose memories yet linger in the communal recollections of the bookselling and collecting field and are still occasionally recognized in the arcane markings they sometimes penciled in books they offered. For those who collect not only books, but the collecting history of their books, such information is useful if hardly conclusive. It is one of the most interesting aspects of dealing and collecting.
Pride of place in the order of presentation goes to William Gowans, who, in 1828, at the age of 25 made his way to New York City from Indiana after a brief career as a long boatman on the Mississippi. He was a Lincoln contemporary and engaged in the same occupation on the same river and though they never met, their boats would have crossed paths. After first engaging in enterprises that now look to have been the ideal boot camp for the soon to emerge bookseller he spent his first New York year as a “gardener, stevedore, stone-cutter, news-vender and super in the old Bowery Theatre.” In 1829 for the first time he shows up in a New York City directory as a dealer and from then on, for the balance of his life he remains a bookseller except for a few years in the early 1840s when he conducted book auctions at 169 Broadway. His success is measured three ways; by his progressively improving address, by the increasing scale of his inventory and by the fame of his collecting clientele. On all accounts Mr. Andrews accords him high marks. “A full list of Mr. Gowan’s customer’s and casual visitors would go far toward supplying the material for a social register and a roll-call of the men of letters of the day.” Among them was Millard Fillmore who had a mania for signing his name and who may have become President only for the purpose of increasing the value of his signature. George Brinley was a client as were John Carter Brown, George Bancroft, Washington Irving and Benson J. Lossing to name only a few. Mr. Gowans also had the distinction of sharing a house with Edgar Allen Poe and left the report that Mr. Poe’s drinking was, like Mark Twain’s death, greatly exaggerated.
Mr. Gowans left to posterity numerous books in which he placed his penciled pricing code on page 25 as well as 28 catalogues, the first issued in 1842 and the last in 1870. Mr. Andrews damns the early catalogues by mentioning “the later ones were carefully compiled and neatly printed” while tiptoeing past the early efforts. Mr. Gowans went to his next, if not higher, calling on January 30, 1871.
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Introduction to The Old Booksellers of New York and other papers
- By Bruce McKinney
Nassau Street, New York showing the bookshops of Burnbaum, Bradburn and Sabin.
Joseph Sabin
Joseph Sabin was born in England in 1821 and immigrated to Philadelphia in the United States in 1848 after completing an apprenticeship with Charles Richards, an Oxford bookseller. In 1850 he moved to New York and took employment as a cataloguer with the bookdealers Cooley and Keese. By the early 1860s he opened a book auction and then a bookshop and by 1864 was established and already at work on the lasting monument that bears his name: “Dictionary of Books Relating to America from its Discovery to the Present Time” or as everyone calls it: Sabin. In time he moved to 64 Nassau Street and maintained his business there for the balance of his career.
Mr. Andrews reports that Sabin’s sales for the period 1864 to 1874 totaled more than a million dollars and that he too was an important source of material for the great collectors of the day. And while “Americana” was his strength he also sold Shakespeare’s first folios as well as “early Chaucers, Miltons, Ben Jonsons, Spensers and Drydens.”
He also published the Bibliopolist: A Literary Register and repository of Notes and Queries, etc. that was begun in 1869 and continued to be published until 1877.
John Bradburn and Others
In this third section on New York book dealers Mr. Andrews first deals in some detail with John Bradburn who followed Mr. Gowans into the trade some ten years later, around 1840, and then continues on to describe other dealers to whose names he attaches memories and distinction.
Mr. Bradburn early on sold books to captains and sailors on the New York docks, an apparently more literary audience than those of us who remember On The Waterfront were led to believe, particularly as his specialties were law, theology and medical books. In the early 1850s he set up shop at the corner of Ann and Nassau Streets and continued there until he retired in 1868. As he earned income he traded it for building lots near Central Park and Fifth Avenue, the equivalent of trading copies of daily newspapers for Columbus Letters and evidence that he was very smart and capable of earning money both directly and indirectly from books.
Next, where first Mr. Andrews throws bouquets he now throws single roses to a group of dealers that he wishes to remember if not so much write about. They are T. H. Morrell, Timothy Reeve, Allan Ebbs, C. S. Francis, C. B. Richardson, John Wiley and Son, Jimmy Lawlor, M’Elrath and Bangs, Calvan Blanchard, Samuel Rayner, Charles B. Norton, and John Doyle. If the first two sections are substantial pieces of a potential bibliographical puzzle this final section provides only casual and circumstantial detail that may intrigue but won’t enlighten.
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Introduction to The Old Booksellers of New York and other papers
- By Bruce McKinney
Exceptional engravings, cartouches and printing are all elements in Andrews books.
“The First Illustrated Magazine Published in New York.”
Mr. Andrews gives Samuel Louden, bookseller and proprietor of the New York Packet, the honor of first publishing a magazine in New York. It was the American and it was edited by Noah Webster. It was first published for December, 1787 and expired in November 1788. Next came the New York magazine that began publication in 1790 and expired in 1797. The early histories of other publications located outside New York are also briefly mentioned.
This section continues on with an explanation of why these publications have become quite collectible. Here is a hint. It wasn’t the editorial matter. It was the images, some of which are the oldest of their kind relating to New York. They were rare and expensive in 1890.
The Early American Almanac
The final essay concerns almanacs. The second printed item in what became in time the United States was, according to Mr. Andrew’s description, “An Almanac for the Year of our Lord 1639. He attributes it to William Pierce. He then follows the development of this print form through to Poor Richard himself, Benjamin Franklin. Those who follow the almanac market on eBay know that the enthusiastic and the knowledgeable cross swords on a regular basis for early examples of this printed form.
All in all this is both a rather brief book, only about 15,000 words, but rather packed with interesting information.
To now read the full text of The Old Booksellers of New York and other Papers click here.
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