Men of the Time, eleventh edition/Bohn, Henry George
BOHN, Henry George, the son of a London bookseller of German extraction, was born Jan. 4, 1796, and at the usual age entered his father's business. He married the only daughter of the late Mr. Simpkin, and in 1831 commenced business on his own account. In 1841 he published his "Guinea Catalogue," exhibiting the largest stock ever collected by a bookseller. He is known as one of the earliest projectors of the movement in favour of cheap and good literature; and with this object in view he established his Historical, Scientific, Illustrated, Classical, Ecclesiastical, and Antiquarian Libraries, amounting in all to between six and seven hundred volumes. For these series he translated several of Schiller's, Goethe's, and Humboldt's works; has edited the "Bibliotheca Parriana," "Addison's Works," and a new and enlarged edition of "Lowndes' Bibliographer's Manual," and compiled a "Polyglot of Foreign Proverbs," a "Handbook of Proverbs," an "Illustrated Handbook of Geography," "Handbook of Pottery and Porcelain," and assisted in several of the classical translations. Mr. Bohn, who is well known as an antiquary, is Fellow of many of the learned and scientific societies, especially of the Philobiblon Society, to which he has contributed a "Life of Shakspere," and an extensive "Dictionary of English Poetical Quotations," volumes which being privately printed have sold by auction for large sums. In 1860 he gained some notoriety as being almost the only literary opponent of the repeal of the duty on paper, insisting, in a series of letters to the Times and Standard, that it would not be of any real advantage to the public, while it would entail a loss of two millions per annum to the revenue.