Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1995

Publication Title

Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America

Volume

89

Issue

1

Pages

61-71

Abstract

The entry in The Eighteenth-Century Short Title Catalogue on CD ROM2 for The History of Miss Dorinda Catsby and Miss Emilia Faulkner (London: printed and sold by S. Bladon, 1772) notes that it contains between volumes one and two an advertisement for the catalog of John Roson's circulating library. However, Roson's library is not included in the lists of known English circulating libraries compiled by Hilda Hamlyn and by Paul Kaufman, and evidently no actual copy of a Roson catalog has survived. Still, merely the advertisement for this catalog tells us much about Roson's library business, and the discovery that he both ran a circulating library and published books makes him another illustration of the important but heretofore largely ignored role played by circulating libraries in the publishing—as well as the distribution—of books in eighteenth-century Britain.

Original Publication Citation

Jacobs, E. (1995). A previously unremarked circulating library: John Roson and the role of circulating-library proprietors as publishers in eighteenth-century Britain. Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 89(1), 61-71.

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