Random Recollections of an Old Publisher

This two-volume autobiography traces the Victorian publisher William Tinsley's career through sketches of authors and other contemporaries.

William Tinsley (Author)

9781108009249, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 4 March 2010

392 pages, 1 b/w illus.
21.6 x 14 x 2.2 cm, 0.5 kg

William Tinsley (1830–1900) was a noted Victorian publisher whose catalogue included works by such celebrated novelists as Thomas Hardy and Wilkie Collins. This two-volume autobiography, first published in 1900, traces his life from his rural childhood to the establishment and rise of the Tinsley Brothers company in 1858, and its later collapse. Each chapter contains a series of brief sketches of authors and other contemporaries. Volume 1 spans Tinsley's early days and travels to London, along with his first encounters with the publishing world. It includes detailed portraits of Mary Elizabeth Braddon and H. J. Byron, and incorporates material on the development of transport and general commerce in the Victorian era. Based on Tinsley's personal recollections, and incorporating letters as well as anecdotal information, these volumes will fascinate anyone interested in the history of publishing and the development of the nineteenth-century novel.

1. On Highgate Hill
2. A budding Bloomfield
3. Thomas and Robert Cooper
4. Mr Mudie and the Library Company
5. Joseph Hatton the novelist
6. Harrison Ainsworth
7. Mr George Meredith
8. Robert Crawford, of Edinburgh
9. H. S. Leigh
10. H. J. Byron
11. James Grant the journalist
12. Charles James Matthews
13. William Black
14. Shirley Brooks
15. A sad end to a merry party
16. J. L. Toole at the Coventry Street picture shop.

Subject Areas: Publishing industry & book trade [KNTP]