The Routledge and Warne publishing families: Part 4

The start of Routledge’s Railway Library

George Routledge continued to operate as a publisher at 36 Soho Square through the mid 1840s, and published an eclectic mixture of titles, mainly reprints of English and American fiction and non-fiction. He continued to publish the very successful biblical commentaries of the American Reverend Barnes that he had started selling in the early 1840s. He introduced the world at large to the unconventional, socially-concerned fiction of Henry Cockton (1807-1853), by reprinting “The Life and Adventures of Valentine Fox, the Ventriloquist”, an expose of the parlous state of British mental asylums and lunacy laws, first published in 1840, and “The Life and Adventures of George St. Julien, the Prince of Swindlers” (1841). Both were first reprinted by Routledge in 1844. He was probably able to publish these books because of the bankruptcy of Cockton in 1842. Routledge continued to publish reprints of “Valentine Fox” for many years, and more than 400,000 copies of this now mostly forgotten title were published by the end of the 19th century.

Most of the Routledge reprints of Cockton’s books reproduced the illustrations by Thomas Onwhyn from the first editions. Onwhyn had gained notoriety following his publication of pirated versions of Charles Dickens’ Pickwick Papers and Nicholas Nickleby containing his own illustrations; Dickens famously complained of “the singular vileness of the illustrations.”

Routledge also published reprints of some of the novels of William Harrison Ainsworth during this period. Ainsworth, a friend and collaborator of Dickens, had come to the public’s notice with the publication by Richard Bentley of his first novel, “Rookwood”, in 1834. Just as with Cockton, Routledge republished Ainsworth’s novels with their original illustrations, many of which were by Dickens’ main illustrators, Cruikshank and “Phiz”.

George Cruikshank illustration from Ainsworth’s “The Tower of London” reprinted by Routledge

By the end of the 1840s, Routledge was trying to find a better way of publishing his reprints. He had noticed the reprinted novels published by Simms and McIntyre in Belfast in 1846 under the series title of “The Parlour Novels”, which in 1847 became “The Parlour Library”. These were low-price publications in attractive embossed cloth bindings. Routledge used to travel around the country selling his own books directly to provincial booksellers. He started doing this by stagecoach, but by the mid to late 1840s he travelled on the rapidly-developing British railway system, which had become both extensive and cheap in the period 1835-1845. During these journeys, he noticed the growing popularity of reading on trains, an activity which had become possible due to the much smoother ride that the railway offered, compared to the stagecoach.

Routledge put these two observations together and decided to produce high quality but low-cost reprints, specifically targeted at the growing population of railway travellers. This became Routledge’s Railway Library, which was launched in 1849. The books were mainly sold by the bookseller W.H. Smith, who had developed the first bookstalls in British railway stations in 1848. Routledge’s Railway Library was a huge success, and although it was soon copied by other publishers, it was the financial making of George Routledge. The series was launched with about a dozen titles available in 1849. By 1898, when the series ended, more than 1270 titles had been published in the Routledge Railway Library series.

The changing styles of the card-bound books issued as part of the Railway Library over its first fifteen years are illustrated above. The left-hand panel shows James Fenimore Cooper’s “The Pilot”, published in 1849 as the first book in the series. The British copyright for Fenimore Cooper was held by Richard Bentley at this time, but Routledge ignored this, and in fact published six Fenimore Cooper titles in his first ten Railway Library books. Later on, after the success of the Railway Library had been assured, Routledge belatedly paid Bentley his royalties for the copyright infringements, and entered into an arrangement with Bentley to reprint thirty-six of Bentley’s Standard Novels as Routledge’s Standard Novels, a series that ran from 1851 to 1860.

The middle panel shows another American book, this time by Nathaniel Hawthorne, reprinted by Routledge in the Railway Library series in 1852. You can see that by this time, the success of the Railway Library had allowed Routledge to move his publishing business to 2 Farringdon Street, a much better address than 36 Soho Square, although Soho Square remained the family home until the late 1850s. The business move to Farringdon St. happened in the second half of 1851.

In the right-hand panel, we can see that by 1863, the firm had matured into Routledge, Warne and Routledge, by the inclusion into the partnership of George Routledge’s brother in law, Frederick Warne, and Routledge’s eldest son Robert Warne Routledge. The firm was still operating at 2 Farringdon Street at this time, and the book shown is by an English author, Mrs. Catherine Gore, who was one of the most prolific and popular writers of the 19th century. Her obituary in The Times in 1861 described her as “the best novel writer of her class and the wittiest woman of her age.”

Note that the price of the Railway Library books had been kept at one shilling for all three of these books issued over a 14 year period. The basic price remained at one shilling for the card-bound books until the 1870s, although cloth-bound versions, which shamelessly copied the binding style of the Simms and McIntyre Parlour Library, were also available at 1s 6d.

The first ten books issued in the Railway Library series were:

1	The Pilot	James Fenimore Cooper
2	Jane Sinclair	William Carleton
3	The Last of the Mohicans	James Fenimore Cooper
4	The Pioneers	James Fenimore Cooper
5	The Prairie	James Fenimore Cooper
6	The Dutchman’s Fireside	James Kirke Paulding
7	The Spy	James Fenimore Cooper
8	Sense and Sensibility	Jane Austen
9	The Water Witch	James Fenimore Cooper
10	Pride and Prejudice	Jane Austen

An almost complete list of the first 100 titles can be found here.

The success of The Railway Library series encouraged George Routledge to take a considerable financial gamble in 1853. On December 27^th of that year, he signed a contract with the author Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton for the right for ten years to publish reprints of nineteen of Lytton’s novels in The Railway Library series, for what Routledge described as “the immense sum of twenty thousand pounds.” It turned out to be a successful investment, so much so that when the contract expired in 1863, Routledge agreed to pay a further ten thousand pounds to extend the publication rights for another ten years. The outcome of these arrangements is that novels by Sir Edward, later Lord Lytton, are the commonest titles from Routledge’s Railway Library to be found in the secondhand book world today.

In later years, the appearance of the Railway Library series continued to change. By the mid 1850’s the very popular “Yellowback” binding style had been adopted by Routledge for the Railway Library, which made the books look rather similar to books from several other publishers of cheap reprints at that time. Some examples of these Routledge Railway Library Yellowbacks, which were priced at 2 shillings, are shown below.

In the next installment of this series I will look at the changes that occurred in George Routledge’s family and his business in the years 1850 to 1870.

Melbourne Rare Book Week 2023

Featured

A girl floating over Melbourne carried by book shaped balloons

MRBW to return in 2023

Melbourne Rare Book week will be returning to the Melbourne cultural scene following a three year gap due to the COVID19 pandemic. This popular free festival that celebrates the book and all other printed materials will run again starting on Friday 21st July 2023 and will culminate with the ANZAAB Melbourne Rare Book Fair which will run from July 27th to July 29th 2023 at Wilson Hall at the University of Melbourne.

We anticipate that the full program will be announced in early May and that bookings for our events will be open by late May via the new Rare Books Melbourne Web site.

To receive information about MRBW 2023, please click here to join our news-list.

So note these dates in your diary:

21st to 29th July 2023 for Melbourne Rare Book Week 2023

Melbourne Rare Book Week

For the Love of Books

The Routledge and Warne publishing families: Part 3

Starting out together in the book trade.

In Part 1 of this series, the Cumberland origins of George Routledge and how he started as a Soho bookseller are described. In Part 2, the Gloucestershire origins of the Warne family and how Frederick Warne became a neighbour of George Routledge is explained. This post, Part 3, will cover how the Routledge and Warne families started working together in the book trade.

The Beginnings of George Routledge, Publisher

George Routledge arrived in London in October 1833, having just completed his apprenticeship as a bookseller in Carlisle. He rented 11 Ryder’s Court in Soho as his home. For the next three years, he worked for an established bookseller/publisher, Baldwin and Craddock of Paternoster Row. In September 1836, following the failure of the firm of Baldwin and Craddock, George Routledge set himself up as a bookseller at 11 Ryder’s Court. He published his first book from that address just before the end of 1836.

In 1827, Frederick Warne, then aged 2, together with his five year old brother, William Henry Warne (1822-1859) moved with their parents and siblings from 5 Ryder’s Court to live literally just around the corner at 41 Lisle Street where Frederick was to remain until 1852. The move allowed his father Edmund to separate his family home from his business by also renting 42 Lisle Street as a workshop and showroom. The first known interaction between the Warne family and George Routledge was the witnessing of the will of Frederick’s oldest and short-lived brother Robert Alexander Warne (1808-1834) by George Routledge in 1834. This was followed by three other much more significant events.

Shortly after he opened his bookshop at 11 Rider’s Court in 1836, George Routledge engaged the fourteen year old William Henry Warne as his assistant and apprentice. Although the main business from 11 Ryder’s Court was selling books, George Routledge began to publish books in 1836 and these early Routledge publications from Ryder’s Court are now very scarce. Shown below are two early Routledge title pages, both published from Ryder’s Court in 1840.

It was very common in the 18th and 19th century for booksellers to become publishers. This made a lot of sense, as it provided a ready supply of books for sale, both through retail via a bookshop, but also to the wholesale market, the circulating libraries and within the book trade to other booksellers. These last three activities helped to mitigate some of the economic risks of publishing. Sometimes two or more booksellers would combine to publish a book in order to share the risks, and the profits.

George Routledge marries.

The ties between the Warne family and George Routledge became even closer on 25th January 1837, when George Routledge married Marie Elizabeth Warne (1814-1855), the sister of Frederick and William Henry Warne. The wedding took place at the church of St. Anne’s Soho, in Westminster. This was the local parish church for the Warne family and for George Routledge and, despite being largely destroyed in 1940 in the Blitz, it was rebuilt and is still the parish church today.

**St Anne’s Soho in the 19th century by J. McN. Whistler**

In 1839, the links between the Warne family and George Routledge strengthened, when the fourteen year old Frederick Warne joined his older brother William Henry as an assistant to George Routledge, bookseller. George and Marie Routledge lived above the bookshop at 11 Ryder’s Court, where the first four of their eight children were born. These included the two oldest sons of George Routledge, Robert Warne Routledge (1837-1899) and Edmund Routledge (1843-1899), who were both to play important parts in Routledge publishing history.

36 Soho Square

In May 1843, the Routledge family and business were still at 11 Ryder’s Court. Sometime in the second half of 1843, George Routledge, his wife and four children, and business, all moved from Ryder’s Court to much larger premises at 36 Soho Square, about 300 metres north of Ryder’s Court. George continued to refer to himself as a bookseller for the next few years, but gradually changed his description in the later 1840s to “Bookseller and Publisher”.

The next three Routledge children, Maria, William Henry and George, were all born at 36 Soho Square. The building has survived in good shape into the 21st century, where it is a Grade II listed building that is rented for office space. For much of the 20th century, it housed the music publishing department of Oxford University Press. It clearly provided good accommodation in the upper floors for a growing family, while providing the bookshop and publishing spaces on the ground floor.

The page below is from one of the most profitable series of books published by Routledge from Soho Square in the 1840s. It is one of twenty-one volumes of Rev. Albert Barnes’ commentaries on the bible. Barnes was an American pastor who was a prolific author of religious books. Routledge published all 21 volumes of Barnes’ commentaries, starting in 1845. The page shown is an advertisement for the series from my copy of the Thessalonians commentary published in 1846.

In Part 4 of this series of posts, the development and expansion of Routledge’s publishing activities from 1845 to 1865 will be discussed.

The Routledge and Warne publishing families: Part 2.

Frederick Warne (1825 – 1901)

Frederick Warne and his siblings

Frederick Warne was born at 5 Ryder’s Court in Soho, London on 13th October 1825. He was the eleventh of the thirteen children born to Edmund Warne (1783-1870) and his wife Matilda Stannard (1787 -1863). Only one of his twelve siblings, Maria Warne (1809-1810), died in infancy, while one other sister, Louisa Jane Warne (1818-1833), died at the age of 14. All of Frederick’s other ten siblings lived to reach adult life, with four of them dying relatively young, between the ages of 25 and 45, while four others lived beyond their 80th year, including Frederick’s closest sibling in terms of birth year, Stannard Warne (1824-1919), who lived for over 95 years. The life expectancy for Frederick and his siblings would have been 33 years according to London records. Their actual average lifespan was 57 years, showing that the family must have been quite well housed and fed, in spite of their large size. Frederick’s older brother, William Henry Warne (1822-1859) was to play an important role in the development of Frederick Warne as a publisher.

Origins of the Warne family

Frederick Warne’s father Edmund Warne (1783-1870) worked in London as a carpenter, surveyor and builder, but was not born in London. He was christened on 1st January 1784 in Newent, a small medieval market town in Gloucestershire, about 10 miles (16 km) north west of the city of Gloucester. Newent was a initially Romano-British settlement and is mentioned in the Domesday Book as belonging in 1066 to the king Edward the Confessor, as part of the Royal Forest of Dean. Edmund Warne’s father, also an Edmund Warne (1745 – 1818), grandfather John Warne (1711-1786) and great grandfather Thomas Warne (c1675-c1765) all lived in Newent and worked as carpenters.

Frederick Warne’s paternal grandparents

Edmund Warne senior (1745-1818) was christened in Newent on 1st January 1746 and married Anne Beale (1751-1827) at Eldersfield in Worcestershire on 31st January 1777. Eldersfield, which is now in Gloucestershire, is a small town about 10 miles (16km) north east of Newent. Edmund Warne and Anne Beale had eight children all of whom were born in Newent between 1778 and 1787. The couple had 4 sons and four daughters. Edmund Warne senior seems to have moved with his family to St. Pancras, London in 1787. This can be inferred by the birth of his youngest son James Warne in 1787 in Newent, followed by the christening of James Warne on 30th August 1787 at Fitzroy Chapel in Maple Street, St. Pancras in London. The next mention of Edmund Warne in London is as a master carpenter living in St. Pancras who takes on an apprentice on 30th August 1791. In 1798 and 1799, Edmund is recorded as renting premises at 12 shillings from Lord Southampton on the west side of Tottenham Court Road. Presumably he both lived and worked in that building, which might have been 120 Tottenham Court Road as that was Edmund Warne’s son William Warne’s business address as a carpenter in 1810. 120 Tottenham Court Road is on the west side of the street, within 100 meters of Maple Street, where the Fitzroy chapel was before its destruction in 1945. In the early 19th century, Baron Southampton was the major owner of the buildings and land on the west side of Tottenham Court Road, whereas the Duke of Bedford was the owner of the premises on the east side.

Edmund senior died in January 1818 in the parish of St. Pancras, but was buried in the nearby St James parish church in Westminster, rather than in the parish of St Pancras. Nine years later, his widow Anne also died as a resident of St Pancras in 1827, and was buried at St James parish church in Westminster, presumably in the same grave as her husband Edmund Warne senior.

The Warnes and the Stannards: a triple wedding

Edmund Warne junior (1783-1870), the father of Frederick Warne married Matilda Stannard (1787 -1863) at St Anne’s Soho in Westminster on 18th May 1805. Remarkably, two of Edmund’s brothers William Warne and George Darling Warne married two of Matilda Stannard’s sisters at the same church on the same day: William Warne (1780-1863) married Mary Elizabeth Stannard (1781-1837) and George Darling Warne (1782-1843) married Ann Stannard (1785-1852). The three Stannard sisters were the daughters of Robert Alexander Stannard (1757-1823) and Martha Negus (1764-1819). Robert and Martha had also married at St Anne’s Soho on 29 October 1780 and had eight children, six daughters and two sons. Robert Alexander Stannard was a painter and glazier by trade. He was originally from Norfolk and was probably born in Norwich. His father Robert Stannard seems to have moved the family from Norfolk to London in the 1770s.

The Stannard family lived at 16 Ryder Court in Soho, the same court where Edmund Warne junior and George Darling Warne set up as carpenters together at number 5, specialising in the manufacture of “reeded handrails for staircases”, and where George Routledge, at number 11, established his first book business in London. Ryder’s Court, which no longer exists, was just to the north of Leicester Square and was owned in the early 19th century by the Marquis of Salisbury.

It seems that the Warne brothers set up their carpentry business in Ryders Court because they had married the Stannard sisters who were already living there, as there was no record of the Warne brothers’ business in Ryder’s Court in the tenant’s list for 1806, the year following their marriages, but the name Warne does appear on the tenant’s list for 1808 and Edmund and George Darling Warne are listed as carpenters in Ryder’s Court in a trade directory for 1810. Rental records show that George and Edmond Warne were joint tenants from 1812 until 1817, but that by 1820, only Edmund Warne was recorded as the tenant of 5 Ryder’s Court. George Darling Warne had moved with his family to St. Pancras by 1820, perhaps to live with his widowed mother. By 1825, he lived at 8 Mill Street, St George Hanover Square, now part of Mayfair, where he remained until his death in 1843.

Later years of Edmund Warne

Edmund Warne lived with his growing family at 5 Ryder’s Court from 1806 until 1827, when the family moved to live at 41 Lisle Street, with his business located next door at 42 Lisle Street. Edmund and his family were recorded at 41 Lisle Street in the March 30th 1851 census. At this time, Edmund was describing himself as a builder and surveyor. Only the two youngest children were still living with their parents: Frederick Warne, described as “bookseller”, and Rosa Margaret Warne. Rosa Margaret married on 29 April 1851 and left home, and Frederick Warne married in July 1852. Edmund and Matilda were still at Lisle Street in 1858, but by 1861, they had moved to Tottenham in North London, where they lived in a house in the Green Lanes area that Edmund called Newent Villa, as a reminder of his birth place. He was still apparently working as a surveyor when his wife Matilda died at home on 28th August 1863. Seven years later, Edmund Warne died at Newent Villa in February 1870 and was buried at Kensal Green cemetery on 24th February 1870.

In the next post, I will look at how the Warne and Routledge families started together in the book trade.

The Routledge and Warne publishing families: Part 1.

Routledge and Warne: Two publishing families

George Routledge (1812-1888) and Frederick Warne (1825-1901) started two of the leading publishing houses that operated in Britain from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century. The two men had both professional and personal connections; they also shared a commitment to make available hundreds of thousands of inexpensive books of high quality to the readership of the English speaking world. This is the first part of their story as men, booksellers and publishers.

Publishing fiction in the 19th century

For most of the 19th century, publishing of high quality fiction in England was dominated by a small group of established publishers who were committed to production of new fiction in the form of the three volume edition (known as a triple decker), which was sold for 31 shillings and sixpence (a guinea and a half). This format and price survived for most the 19th century, starting in the Regency period, when Jane Austen’s works were first published, and ending around 1896.

The three volume format was very much supported and encouraged by the circulating lending libraries, of which Mudie’s Subscription Library was the dominant player. Mudie’s alone would often purchase, at a considerable discount, 30-50% of the edition of a new book, and would lend it to their subscribers, one volume at a time.

The leading publishers for most of this era were the big seven; Chapman and Hall, Smith, Elder and Co., Longmans in their various guises, John Murray, Blackwoods, Macmillans, and Bradbury and Evans. These seven firms managed to publish most of the significant new fiction of the 19th century. In spite of the introduction of serialisation by several of these publishers, led by Chapman and Hall with Dickens’ “Pickwick Papers” in 1837, they were all committed to the triple decker. The two big university presses, Oxford with the Clarendon Press and the Cambridge University Press, did not enter the world of fiction until the end of the 19th century. Until then, they had confined their efforts to publishing academic and religious books, including their domination of the lucrative bible trade.

Second rank publishers

The second level of publishers tended to specialise in cheaper reprinted editions. Routledge and Warne were in this group, along with Richard Bentley, Cassells, and, later on, Thomas Nelson and a host of others. By 1860, there were more than 200 publishers operating in London alone, and at least 600 booksellers. Another 20 publishers operated out of Edinburgh, which was the centre of the book trade in Scotland. This might seem to suggest a high level of competition, but the trade was careful not to rock the boat and had become very conservative. The second rank publishers had to create their own niches in order to thrive. Into this world stepped George Routledge and Frederick Warne.

George Routledge

Family origins

George Routledge was born on 23rd September 1812 in Brampton, Cumberland (now called Cumbria), a small market town close to the Scottish border. It is 15km north-east of Carlisle and only 3km from Hadrian’s Wall. His father, Robert Francis Routledge, had also been born in Brampton on 17th June 1760. Little is known about the origins of Robert’s father and Georges’s grandfather, a John Routledge, who had been born somewhere in Scotland around 1730. John Routledge moved down to Cumberland as a young man and on 15th July 1752, he married a member of a Cumberland branch of the Routledge family, Sybil or Sybella Routledge in Bewcastle, Cumberland. Sibil had been born in Bewcastle on 2nd October 1726, the daughter of another John Routledge from Lanercost, a small village in Cumberland 5km north-east of Brampton. Bewcastle is small hamlet of fewer than 500 inhabitants, which nestles in a valley some 8km northeast of Lanercost, very close to the Scottish border. St Cuthbert’s church in Bewcastle, where John and Sibil Routledge were married, is famous today for having in its churchyard the oldest Anglo-Saxon standing stone cross and sundial in Britain.

All of this means that George Routledge is descended from both a Scottish and an English branch of the Routledge family. Descendants of those families can be found today in the region, still bearing the Routledge name on both sides of the Scottish-English border.

George’s immediate family

George’s mother was Mary Calvert (1766-1843), the daughter of Robert Calvert of Lanercost. Mary Calvert and Robert Francis Routledge were married on 7th January 1796 in Lanercost, and had eight children born between 1797 and 1812, one of whom, Catherine, died in infancy. George Routledge was the youngest of these eight children.

Life must have become much harder for George’s mother Mary, who was always known as “Malley”, when her husband Robert Francis died on 12th July 1815, leaving Malley with 7 children to care for, from the three year old George up to the oldest child, Mary Routledge who was 18 when her father died. Three years later, young Mary Routledge married a local farm worker called David Latimer, with whom she had 10 children in Brampton, leaving Malley with a family of six to manage.

Mally ran a grocery shop in Front Street, Brampton in order to support herself and her children. Two of her daughters Margaret and Anne never married and helped her to run the shop, taking it over when Malley died in 1843, and running between them until the late 1870s. Margaret and Ann Routledge eventually died as spinsters in Brampton in 1880 and 1881 respectively.

George had three older brothers who all married and had diverse careers. The eldest, John Routledge (1800-1859) stayed in Brampton with his wife Rachel and their two daughters. John was the High Constable in Brampton for the last 20 years of his life. The next brother, Robert Routledge (1802-1861) married a Scot called Mary Dicks in Perthshire, where they had one child, a son also called Robert. The family moved to Manchester, where Robert worked as a supervisor in the Inland Revenue until his death. George’s third brother, William Routledge (1804-1875) took holy orders and achieved a Doctor of Divinity. Together with his wife, Henrietta, William ran “The Routledge Classical School” for several years in Bishops Hull, Somerset , before reverting to life as a parish clergyman, ending up as the Rector of Cotleigh in Devon, where he died in the rectory in March 1875. William and Henrietta successfully raised two daughters and two sons, the youngest of whom became the Reverend Charles Francis Routledge following on in his father’s profession.

From this history it is evident that none of George’s siblings had anything to do with the book trade, or with London. So, how did George Routledge become a bookseller and publisher in London?

George Routledge, bookseller

George Routledge moved from Brampton to nearby Carlisle in June 1827, where he became apprenticed to Charles Hutchinson Thurnam, a Scot from Edinburgh, who had opened a bookshop and library at 5 English Street in 1817. George completed his apprenticeship on 3rd September 1833, and he moved to London in October 1833. Thurnam and Sons bookshop and printing business in Carlisle continued to operate for nearly 200 years until, unfortunately, the business failed and was closed on May 28th 2008.

In London, George initially lived in Ryder’s Court in St. Anne’s parish in Soho. This area of Soho was very much a district of craftsmen and artisans in the early part of the 19th century. Ryder’s Court is no longer extant, but used to run south towards Leicester Square from the junction of Lisle Street and Newport Street. The area is now part of London’s Chinatown.

George started his life in London by working for the publishers Baldwin and Cradock at 47 Paternoster Row in the centre of the London book trade. Robert Baldwin with his partners Craddock and Joy were most successful in publishing maps and atlases under the rubric of The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. When Baldwin and Cradock failed in September 1836, George Routledge decided to open a bookshop at 11 Ryder’s Court, from where he also started to operate as an occasional publisher.

In my collection, I have several books published by George Routledge from Ryder’s Court. The oldest is Beauties of Gilsland – A Sketch of the Most Remarkable Objects Near Gilsland Spa by William Steele, which was published by Routledge in late 1836. This was in fact the first book ever published by George Routledge.

Gilsland Spa was a well known hotel in Gilsland, a village which sits on Hadrian’s Wall and spans the boundary between Cumberland and Northumberland. The hotel had been built in 1760, and was the place where Sir Walter Scott, then plain Walter Scott, was reputed to have proposed to his future wife in 1797 at the “Popping Stone”. Routledge would have known the area from his youth, as Gilsland is about 15km east of Brampton. The author, William Steele, may have been known to George Routledge from his time in Cumberland. There were at least five men called William Steele living in the northern parts of Cumberland according to the 1841 census. Any one of these could have been the author of the book.

My copy of the book seems to be in the original cloth binding that Routledge would have chosen. The title page is shown in the picture below. Sadly, the book was a commercial failure, but now is a great scarcity. Note that the date on the title page is given in the Latin form of “M DCCCXXXVI” rather than “1836”. This is slightly unusual, as most books published by Routledge used standard Arabic numerals for their dates.

Routledge meets the Warne family

One of George’s neighbours in Soho was Edmund Warne (1783-1870), a builder who had lived at 5 Ryder’s Court. Edmund the builder had been born in Gloucestershire, the son of another Edmund Warne, a carpenter who had moved his family from Gloucestershire to London in the late 1780s, when the younger Edmund was about 5 years old. Edmund the builder had married a Matilda Stannard in 1805 and had lived with his growing family at 5 Ryder’s Court from 1805 until 1827, when the family moved nearby to 41 Lisle Street, which is where they were living when George Routledge arrived in Soho. The Warne family remained at 41 Lisle Street until at least 1851. By 1861, when all their children had grown up and left home, Edmund and Matilda had moved to Hornsea in North London. Matilda Stannard was very much a local Soho girl, as she was the daughter of Robert Alexander Stannard, a painter who lived at 16 Ryder’s Court.

The earliest evidence of George Routledge’s presence in Soho and of his relationship with the Warne family is his signature as a witness on the 1834 will of Robert Alexander Warne (1808-1834), the oldest but short-lived son of Edmund Warne and Matilda Stannard.

**George Routledge’s signature on the will of Robert Alexander Warne, 1834**

Edmund and Matilda were to become more significant in the life of George Routledge, as they were also the parents of George Routledge’s first wife, Marie Elizabeth Warne, and his first two business partners William Henry Warne and Frederick Warne.

End of Part 1.

The story continues with an exploration of origins of the Warne family in Part 2.

Emma takes to the West End stage

An exploration of the first London stage production of Jane Austen’s Emma

The novels of Jane Austen have been the basis of many dramatic performances from the first home theatrical extracts arranged by Rosina Filippi and published by J M Dent in 1895, to the modern adaptations of the novels for the movie and television industries. The first full play to appear as a dramatic adaptation was a version of Pride and Prejudice published in 1906, and several more adaptations of this novel have continued to appear over the subsequent 100 years, including, in 1936, Miss Elizabeth Bennet by A.A. Milne, the author of Winnie-the-pooh.

Left and Centre: Rosina Filippi’s Duologues (1895). Right: Dust jacket from Milne’s Miss Elizabeth Bennet (1936)

Dramatic versions of Emma

The first full dramatic version of Emma to be published was Romances by Emma by DeWitt Bodeen in 1938, which was first performed in Pasadena, California. This was followed by Emma by Marion Morse MacKaye; the play was written in 1937 but the author died before its first publication by Macmillan and first performance at the North Dakota Agricultural College, both occurring in 1941. The first English dramatisation of Emma was a three act play called Emma, written by John Lindsey and Ronald Russell, which was published by the theatrical script publisher Samuel French in 1943 and first produced at The Little Theatre in Bristol in March of the same year.

The first London production of Emma

The first production of Emma to appear in a theatre in London was a three act play, Emma, written by Gordon Glennon and published by Macmillan in 1945. Before coming to St James’s Theatre in London, the play had a successful regional tour, opening with performances in Rugby in August 1943 and including a popular and critically acclaimed season in Manchester before the first London performance on 7th February 1945. The play was produced by the popular film star Robert Donat, who worked as a theatrical promotor during the Second World War. The play had a cast of 12 actors, led by Anna Neagle, (1904-1986), a popular starlet who had started as a stage dancer but who had achieved recent film successes in the title roles of films about Nell Gwyn (1935), Queen Victoria (1937 and 1938) and Edith Cavell (1939). As well as a very good copy of the first Macmillan edition of Emma (1945) in dust jacket, I also have a copy of the program for the London season of the play, which was only moderately successful at around 60 performances.

The play, which ran in London from February to April 1945 was in competition with air raids from Hitler’s Vengeance weapons, the V1 “Doodlebug” and the V2 rocket designed by Wernher von Braun. A V2 exploded very close to the theatre during one evening performance. There is interesting advice in the program to the theatre patrons on how to react to an air raid, which I have reproduced below.

Emma the play

The play is structured into three acts, with Act 1 consisting of a single scene and Acts 2 and 3 both arranged as two scenes each. The program tells us that the events take place in 1815. All of the action of the play occurs on the same set, which represents the Woodhouse’s drawing room at Hartfield. This means that we hear about events that occur elsewhere, such as Harriet’s encounter with the gypsies, and the Weston’s ball, all during conversations in the drawing room, and that Mr. Elton’s attempted proposal to Emma, Frank Churchill’s misapprehended conversation to Emma about Jane Fairfax and Emma’s insulting remark to Miss Bates all are arranged to occur within the Woodhouse’s drawing room.

The dialogue of the play is sometimes close to the original words of the novel and at other times diverges quite considerably. For instance, here from Act 2 Scene 2 of the play is Glennon’s version of the remark by Miss Bates which provokes Emma’s insult, followed by Emma’s unfortunate response:

Miss Bates: Oh, that will not be difficult. I shall be sure to say three dull things as soon as I open my mouth.
Emma: (unable to resist) Ah, madam, but you will be limited as to the number – only three at once.
Emma Act 2 Scene 2.

This is a considerable contraction of the original dialogue from Chapter 43 of Emma, which takes place during the outing to Box Hill. It diminishes the prolix nature of Miss Bates’ conversation. Here is the original as written by Jane Austen:

“Oh! very well,” exclaimed Miss Bates; “then I need not be uneasy. ‘Three things very dull indeed.’ That will just do for me, you know. I shall be sure to say three dull things as soon as ever I open my mouth, shan’t I?” looking round with the most good-humoured dependence on everyone’s assent. “Do you not all think I shall ?”
Emma could not resist.
” Ah, ma’am, but there may be a difficulty. Pardon me, but you will be limited as to the number – only three at once.“
Emma, Chapter XLIII

I leave the reader to judge how well or otherwise Mr. Glennon has done with this famous passage.

Images from the play

Both the program and the book of the play give the original cast list. I have reproduced the version from the program below. I am not aware of any changes to the cast during the play’s short London run. I assume that this program, which cost 6d, was held by a woman, as the red smudge, seen alongside Harriet Smith and Mr. Elton, appears to be lipstick!

I had wondered what the set and actors looked like and how authentic the costumes were. I have recently been fortunate enough to gain some insight into this. I have just received a copy of an edition of Emma published in 1890 by George Routledge and Sons Ltd. The Irish dealer who I bought it from had described the book as having “some newspaper cuttings stuck to the front prelims”. Imagine my delight to discover that these cuttings were pictures taken from a magazine of the London production of Gordon Glennon’s Emma, with Anna Neagle and the rest of the cast as listed above. Photos of Mr. Elton’s proposal to Emma, Frank Churchill’s non-proposal to Emma and Mr. Knightley’s proposal to Emma are shown below.

Left: Mr Elton and Emma. Centre: Frank Churchill and Emma. Right: Mr. Knightley and Emma

The play ends with the whole ensemble on stage, with everyone asked to toast the three future brides, Jane Fairfax, Harriet Smith and Emma Woodhouse in turn. Note that Glennon has decreed that Frank Churchill and Jane Fairfax will marry. Also note that Robert Martin does not get an appearance in this version of Emma. Below is the picture of that final final toasting scene.

From the left we can see:

Miss Bates; Frank and Jane; Mr. Woodhouse; Mrs. Weston; Emma; Mr. Weston; Harriet; Serle; Mr. Knightley; Mrs. and Mr. Elton

For more information on the representations of Emma on stage, I suggest that you view the entertaining video presentation by Professor Devoney Looser at the 2020 Virtual JaneCom which can be viewed on You Tube.

More about interesting books relating to Jane Austen will be posted shortly.

Robinson Crusoe for Younger readers

Note: In this and linked posts, I have recrafted some material from earlier posts to improve navigation.

Robinson Crusoe as a book for Juveniles

Defoe intended his book to be a moral tale that showed how a rather reckless youth can become a thoughtful, religious and worthy man, by application to work and devotion to the scriptures. The original text by Defoe contains many sections of religious or philosophical ruminations, that can make the book quite heavy going for the younger or indeed the modern reader. It was first recognised by a German writer that Robinson Crusoe contained the kernel of an exciting story for younger people. Accordingly, in 1779, Joachim Heinrich Campe translated and edited Defoe’s work to produce Robinson der Jüngere (Robinson the Younger). Campe followed this with a similar treatment of The Farther Adventures published as a second volume in 1780.

These two books came to the attention of the London publisher John Stockdale, who translated them back into English, and then published them in two volumes as The New Robinson Crusoe An Instructive and Entertainment History for the Use of Children of Both Sexes (1788). Stockdale claimed to have translated the book from a French text, but it was clearly a translation of Campe’s German texts. In the following year, Stockdale published a simplified single volume version of this treatment of Robinson Crusoe as a book for children as An Abridgement of The New Robinson Crusoe An Instructive and Entertainment History for the Use of Children of Both Sexes (1789). This was the real start in English of Robinson Crusoe as an adventure book for the younger reader. It is interesting that these two publications by Stockdale predate by one and two years his famous two volume illustrated edition of Robinson Crusoe for adult readers.

Here follows a link to a posting about my copy of An Abridgement of The New Robinson Crusoe An Instructive and Entertainment History for the Use of Children of Both Sexes (1789) and here is a link to a post about my copy of a related reprint published by George Routledge called Robinson the Younger or the New Crusoe (1856).

Since then, there have been many versions of Robinson Crusoe that have been specifically published for the juvenile market. There are editions in simplified language, indeed a couple written in words of one syllable, excluding the personal names. There also continues to be many illustrated editions published for the younger reader, and some more deluxe illustrated editions that were probably intended for the children and adults of wealthy families. The story has also been translated into many different languages over the years.

All of these juvenile editions are based on the first volume of Robinson Crusoe as written by Defoe, which culminates with Crusoe’s escape from the island and his return to England. Some editions may also contain material taken from “The Farther Adventures” that made up the original second volume written by Defoe, particularly the sections describing the return of Crusoe to the island. None of the juvenile editions that I have seen contain material from the more rarefied and philosophical volume 3 of Defoe.

Robinson the Younger 1856

Robinson the Younger or the New Crusoe published in 1856

This version of Robinson Crusoe from my collection was specifically produced for the juvenile reader as Robinson the Younger, and was published by George Routledge & Co. in London in 1856. The upper board, which is the original gilt-decorated cloth binding, and both the engraved and the printed title pages are shown below.

Binding and title pages from Robinson the Younger, George Routledge & Co. London, 1856

The printed title page reveals that this is an English translation of Robinson der Jüngere (1779) by Joachim Heinrich Campe, the first juvenile version of the story of Robinson Crusoe ever published, which was discussed in a previous Robinson Crusoe blog. My copy is the second Routledge edition of 1856, the first edition having appeared in 1855. There seems also to have been a third edition published in 1859. All three editions are scarce, but the text is available in electronic form in several libraries.

The book has two prefaces; a translator’s preface and some extracts from an unattributed author’s preface, which is presumably a translation of part of a preface written in German by Campe in 1779. The translator R. Hick explained how he came to translate Campe’s book as follows:

The original work of which the following is a translation, fell accidentally into my hands when looking for an entertaining German reading book. I was presently struck with its admirable adaptation for the use of children, and once resolved to translate it for my own little boys; during the progress of my agreeable task I now and then read what I had written, sometimes to my wife, sometimes to friends, who one and all strongly recommended my offering it for publication.
Translator’s Preface, Robinson the Younger, George Routledge & Co. London 1856

He finished by writing:

I have endeavoured as much as possible to render it simply what it professes to be, a faithful image of the admirable original, the worth of which has been emphatically stamped by the German public having demanded upwards of forty large editions of it.
R.Hick Woodhouse Hill, Near Leeds, 1855.

The image on the engraved title page in the central panel above shows a man reading from a book to his family grouped around him. This is how Robinson der Jüngere and Robinson the Younger are both structured, with the story being read out to the children by the father as a narrative interrupted by frequent questions from the children. I give an example of this below, with the famous incident of the discovery by Robinson of the footprint. This is from the chapter headed “Fourteenth Evening.”

“He had not gone far when he reached the most southerly part of the island. Here the ground in some parts was sandy, and just as he reached the most prominent point, he was struck almost as with a thunderbolt, became as white as a sheet, and trembled all over.
John.- Why?
Papa.- He saw what he never dreamed of seeing here, the footprints of one or more men in the sand.
Nicholas.- And did that frighten him so? Why, it should have delighted him!
Papa.- The cause of his terror was this : he concluded at once that the man of whose foot this was the print, was not a brother or a friend, who would be ready to help and serve him; but a cruel creature, who would fall upon him in a fury, and would kill and eat him. In a word, he saw in this, not the trace of a polished European, but of a savage cannibal, like those of whom you have heard in the Caribbee Islands.
George.- Ah! That I believe, and so he must have been frightened.”
from Robinson the Younger, George Routledge & Co. London, 1856, pp 117-118.

My copy of the book has no illustrations other than its frontispiece, shown below. The Robinson Crusoe depicted seems decidedly older than the young man described in the text.

Frontispiece from Robinson the Younger, George Routledge and Co. London, second edition 1856

In the next blog postings, I will discuss some other 19th century editions of Robinson Crusoe that I have in my collection.

The New Robinson Crusoe 1789

This is my copy of the 1789 John Stockdale single volume abridged edition of The New Robinson Crusoe. It is correctly titled An Abridgement of The New Robinson Crusoe An Instructive and Entertainment History for the Use of Children of Both Sexes (1789), and is a condensation of Stockdale’s 4 volume edition which was published in the previous year 1788. Stockdale claimed to have translated the book from a French text, but it was clearly a translation of Joachim Heinrich Campe’s 1779 German text Robinson der Jüngere (Robinson the Younger). As can be seen from the title page below, the one volume abridgement could be purchased for two shillings and sixpence in 1789, a bargain compared to the 6 shilling price of the 4 volume edition, specially as all 32 illustrations from the 4 volume set are present in the single volume abridgement.

Fig. 1. **Frontispiece, title page and first text page from the 1789 Stockdale abridgement**

The Abridgement was the real start in English of Robinson Crusoe as an adventure book for the younger reader. As with Campe’s 1779 version, the essential elements of Robinson Crusoe have been incorporated into a story-telling narrative, where a father is telling the story to his children, who constantly interrupt the flow with a barrage of questions and comments. In spite of this rather clumsy structure, the essence of the story comes through surprisingly well. The later Routledge reprints of the New Robinson Crusoe are all clearly based on this 1789 edition of Stockdale.

John Bewick illustrations

The text was generously illustrated with full page wood engravings that had been drawn and engraved by John Bewick (1760-1795), the younger brother of the legendary master of wood engraving, Thomas Bewick. John Bewick died aged 35, where his famous older brother lived to be 75, leaving the Stockdale New Robinson Crusoe one of a relatively small number of books featuring illustrations by John Bewick. The illustrations are in a naive style which had been traditionally used for Robinson Crusoe. The Stothard illustrations for Stockdale’s complete Robinson Crusoe published in the next year (1790) are much more refined and sophisticated, and are generally agreed to represent the first well illustrated Crusoe to be published. A few of John Bewick’s illustrations from The New Robinson Crusoe are shown below.

Fig. 2. Six of John Bewick’s illustrations for The New Robinson Crusoe

It is interesting that in Stockdale’s edition of The New Robinson Crusoe, as in the original Campe edition, it is llamas that are tamed by Crusoe rather than goats. John Bewick’s illustrations show a llama in the last two panels above. The last panel shows Bewick’s interpretation of the famous incident of Crusoe finding strange footprints in the sand.

Provenance

My 1789 copy of The New Robinson Crusoe has an interesting provenance. There is a bookplate for the George Barnes B.D., the Archdeacon of Bombay, on the first front free endpaper. The book also has an inscription on the second front free endpaper which reads “George Barnes, from his Papa, March 1826”. The book has been rebound, but I also have the original boards which have another inscription on the old front paste down which reads “Adelaide Penelope Barnes” and ” Miss Adelaide Barnes, The Rectory, Sowton, Exeter”. These three pieces of ownership evidence are shown below in Figure 3.

Figure 3. Book plate and two ownership inscriptions from The New Robinson Crusoe.

The simplest explanation of these three images is that they represent the book passing through the hands of three members of the Barnes family. I think that the original owner of the book was the Reverend George Barnes (1782-1847), who travelled out to India to become the inaugural Archdeacon of Bombay in 1815 and who founded the Barnes School in Bombay. He was 7 years old when the book was published and probably was given it around that time, when he was living in Devon. He returned to England to become the rector at Sowton, near Exeter in 1825. He cannot be the George Barnes who received the book from his Papa in March 1826, because his “Papa”, Ralph Barnes (1731-1820) was already dead by then. The George Barnes who received the book in March 1826 must be the Reverend George Barnes’ eldest son, George Carnac Barnes (1818-1861) who had been born in India but returned to England with his parents in 1825. George Carnac Barnes would have been 8 years old in 1826. He joined the East India Company in 1836 and went out to India in 1837. He returned to India following his marriage in London in 1856, and distinguished himself as the Commissioner of the main army depot at Amballa cantonment in Haraya state during the Indian Mutiny, for which service he was made a Companion of the Bath (CB). He was briefly Foreign Secretary for India in 1861 and died in Hazareebough, in Bengal, also in 1861.

Adelaide Penelope Barnes (1831-1913) was the third youngest of the ten children of the Reverend George Barnes. She was born in Sowton Rectory , following the family’s return from India in 1825 and lived there until her father’s death in 1847, at which time she and her unmarried siblings moved with their widowed mother to nearby Littleham in Devon. She must have written her name and address in the book before her father’s death in June 1847, when she would have been 16 years old. My guess is that the book possibly passed from her older brother George Carnac Barnes to Adelaide Penelope sometime around 1836-37.

In July 1852, the 21 year old Adelaide Penelope Barnes married a 36 year old Indian army officer who became Lt. General Edward Dayot Watson (1816-1900). They had 5 children born in India before they returned to England in 1868, where two further children were born. Adelaide died in Bath, Somerset in 1913 at the age of 82.

Finally, there is a faint inscription in pencil beneath Adelaide’s upper signature which in part seems to read “Barnes George James.” Beneath that may be the words “Stapylton Barnes”, which should belong to the descendants of George Carnac Barnes. All three children of George Carnac Barnes and his wife Margaret Diana Chetwyn-Stapylton had the name Stapylton Barnes. So far, I can not positively identify any particular member of the Barnes family with this inscription. The book may have changed hands within the family several times and moved from England to India and back more than once, but it is impossible to confirm that.

There are two other interesting people in the Barnes family. The eldest son of George Carnac Barnes was Sir George Stapylton Barnes (1858-1946), who was born at Amballa cantonment shortly after the Indian Mutiny. He became a politician and was the President of the Board of Trade. He may be the Stapylton Barnes referred to in Figure 4, but there is no evidence to suggest that he also had the name James.

The youngest son of Adelaide Penelope Barnes was Reverend Harry de Vitre Watson (1872-1947) who married Mabel Katherine Knatchbull-Hugesson (1868-1944), the grand daughter of Fanny Austen Knight, the favourite niece of Jane Austen. In Figure 5, there are portraits of some of the members of the Barnes family.

In a related posting, I discuss my copy of the 1856 Routledge reprint of The New Robinson Crusoe, which only had a single illustration. In the next posting, I will look at some other illustrated editions of Robinson Crusoe from the 19th century.

Robinson Crusoe: 100 more years

Early 19th century editions

Introduction

Robinson Crusoe continued to be very popular throughout Europe in the early years of the 19th century, with many publishers adding to the growing list of editions. For example, in 1820, Cadell and Davies published an edition which featured re-engraved versions of the Stothard illustrations that had been first published by James Harrison in 1782 and in extended form in 1790 by John Stockdale. In that same year (1820), Tute published an edition of Robinson Crusoe in Dublin, Garney and Le Fuel separately published editions in Paris, and Castiaux and Blocquel published another French edition in Lille. In the following year, at least three more editions were published in Paris followed by another two in 1822, while in London, in 1822, Charles Whittingham and Thomas Kelley each published two volume editions of Robinson Crusoe, Whittingham’s being another reprint of his edition of 1812. None of these editions were specifically published for juvenile readers.

Harvey and Darton edition 1831

The earliest 19th century edition that I have in my collection is from 1831. It was published as a single volume in London by Harvey and Darton, but was not alone, as at least three other editions appeared in London that year; a new single volume edition published by J.F. Dove; an 1818 edition re-published in 1831 by Baldwin and Craddock in two volumes with illustrations by Harvey, and another new edition published in two volumes by John Major, with illustrations by George Cruickshank, who would win everlasting fame a few years later with his illustrations for Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist. 1831 also saw the appearance in the USA of a much republished edition of Robinson Crusoe by Key and Mielke of Philadelphia, with illustrations by William Robinson. A notable Italian edition was also published in 1831 by Gaspare Truffi in Milano.

In the pictures below, I show some images of my Harvey and Darton edition of 1831.

Robinson Crusoe, Harvey and Darton: London, 1831

Keen Jane Austen fans might notice that Harvey and Darton’s offices were in Gracechurch Street, which is the street where the Gardiner family from Pride and Prejudice lived. Gracechurch Street still exists and now finds itself in the shadow of “The Gherkin”, one of London’s newer monstrosities. It must be said that most of London’s publishers at the time were clustered around Covent Garden, St. Paul’s churchyard and The Strand. Gracechurch Street was more mercantile in character and was to the south east, a little way from the publishing heart of the city.

The other notable facet of the title page is that there is no credit given to Daniel Defoe as the author. The reason can be deduced from the images of the two page preface shown below, where the anonymous “Editor” is trying to persuade the reader that the story is a true account of the adventures of a real man, a “just history of fact” rather than a “romance”.

Preface to Robinson Crusoe, *Harvey and Darton*: London, (1831)

Needless to say, there is no “Life of Defoe” printed with this edition. It seems to me remarkable that, more than 100 years after Defoe was first identified as the author of Robinson Crusoe, it was still possible to publish in London an edition that continues the pretense of the 1719 first edition that the story was a true history. This edition was reprinted in 1842 in a similar form by Harvey and Darton.

The illustrations in the Harvey and Darton edition are dated 1831, but are not credited to a particular artist. In addition to the frontispiece shown above, there are four other plates that are produced in a deliberately archaic form with two images per plate enclosed in an ornamental border, reminiscent of some of the cheaper style of chapbook illustrations of the 18th century. They are shown below.

The text in this edition is a condensation of the first two volumes of Robinson Crusoe, as published by Taylor in 1719. It is very much in a style designed for the adult rather than the juvenile reader. To learn how Robinson Crusoe was developed as a book for children, please read this next post.