1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mudie, Charles Edward

MUDIE, CHARLES EDWARD (1818–1890), English publisher and founder of Mudie’s Lending Library, was born at Chelsea on the 18th of October 1818, the son of a secondhand bookseller and newsagent. In 1840 he established a stationery and bookselling business in Bloomsbury, London. He was the first publisher of James Russell Lowell’s poems in England, and of Emerson’s Man Thinking. In 1842 he began to lend books. This department proved so successful that in 1852 he moved his “Select Library” to larger premises in New Oxford Street, London. In 1860 these premises were substantially enlarged, and branches of the business established, and in 1864 “Mudie’s” was converted into a limited company. Mudie himself died on the 28th of October 1890.