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Notes
Jeffrey, in his review of Crabbe's Tales in the Edinburgh Review (November, 1812) made the same point: "In this country, there probably are not less than 300,000 persons who read for amusement or instruction, among the middling classes of society. In the higher classes, there are not as many as 30,000."
As early as 1825 Murray had projected a cheap, popular series of voyages and travels. See Samuel Smiles, A Publisher and His Friends (1891), II, 295.
See for example Alan Cunningham's tribute to Lockhart in the preface to the last volume of his Lives of the Most Eminent British Painters, Sculptors, and Architects.
From a letter (May 16, 1825) to Constable who was picking Lockhart's brains to the benefit of the Miscellany. See T. Constable, Archibald Constable and His Literary Correspondents (1873), III, 315.
Such brief treatments of large subjects were ridiculed in the Athenaeum (January 22, 1831) as "railroads across the wide common of universal knowledge." In this connection it is interesting to recall the following passage from Wordsworth's letter of January 12, 1838 to Dr. Lardner: "The subject which I had thought of is much more limited than you suppose— being nothing more than an Account of the Deceased Poetesses of Great Britain — with an Estimate of their Works — but upon more mature Reflection I cannot persuade myself that it is sufficiently interesting for a separate subject, were I able to do it justice. The Dramatic and other imaginative female Writers might be added — the interest would thereby be encreased, but unity of subject would be sacrificed."
The agreement is in the British Museum, Add.MSS 46,611. There is no indication as to which one of the partners was instrumental in the selection of Jerdan. Although Jerdan and Colburn were associated as early as 1817, political and literary differences developed which caused Colburn to help establish the Athenaeum (1827) as a rival to Jerdan's Literary Gazette. Colburn was, however, quite willing to make use of enemies.
Samuel Carter Hall has it that Jerdan wrote this book. See his Retrospect of a Long Life (1883), p. 179. Jerdan in his spacious autobiography, has not a word on the Juvenile Library.
Three books were later salvaged from the Juvenile Library: Chambers' Scotland; Tytler's Reigns of Edward VI and Mary; James's Lives of Celebrated Commanders. The fourth of the announced series, the Library of Voyages and Travels, is not mentioned in the Bentley Papers.
Edgell Wyatt Edgell, "Moral Statistics of Parishes in Westminster," Journal of the Statistical Society of London, I (December, 1838), 478-92.
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