CONSTABLE, Archibald, an eminent publisher, was born, February 24,
1776, at Kellie in the county of Fife, where his father, Thomas Constable,
acted as overseer to the earl of Kellie. After receiving a plain education at
the school of his native parish (Carnbee), he became in 1788, apprentice to Mr
Peter Hill, bookseller in Edinburgh, the friend and correspondent of Robert
Burns. About the time of the expiration of his apprenticeship, he married
the daughter of Mr David VVillison, printer, who, though averse to the match,
was of some service in enabling him to set up in business for himself. This
latter step he took in the year 1795, opening a shop on the north side of
the High Street, near the cross, and devoting himself at first chiefly to the sale
of old books connected with Scottish history and literature. In this line
of trade he speedily acquired considerable eminence, not so much by the extensiveness of his stock, for his capital was very limited, as by his personal activity, agreeable manners, and the intelligence with which he applied himself
to serve the wants of his customers. At an early period of his career, his shop was resorted to by Mr J. G. Dalzell, Mr Richard Heber, Mr Alexander Campbell, Mr (afterwards Dr) Alexander Murray, Dr John Leyden, Mr Walter Scott, Mr Thomas Thomson, and other young men possessed of a taste for Scottish literary and historical antiquities, for some of whom he published works of no inconsiderable magnitude, previously to the close of the eighteenth century. In 1801, he acquired the property of the Scots Magazine, a venerable repertory of historical, literary, and archaeological matter, upon which he employed the talents of Leyden, Murray, Macneil, and other eminent men in succession, though without any considerable increase to its reputation. In the preceding year, he had commenced the Farmer's Magazine, under the management of an able East Lothian agriculturist, Mr Robert Brown, then of Markle: this work, which appeared quarterly, for many years enjoyed a considerable degree of prosperity, but eventually drooped with the class to whom it appealed, and sank with the house of the publisher.
The small body of ingenious and learned persons who, in 1802, originated the Edinburgh Review, placed it under the commercial management of Mr Constable, who, though unprepared for the great success which it experienced, was not long in perceiving the high merits of its conductors, and acting towards them in an appropriately liberal manner. The business of publishing this great work remained with him for twenty-four years. In 1804, he commenced the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, which remained with him till 1826. It was throughout a successful publication. In 1805, he published, in conjunction with Longman & Co. of London, the first original work of Sir Walter Scott, "The Lay of the Last Minstrel," the success of which was also far beyond his expectations. In the ensuing year, he issued a beautiful edition of what he termed "The Works of Walter Scott, Esq.," in five volumes, comprising the poem just mentioned, the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Sir Tristrern, and a series of Lyrical Pieces. Notwithstanding the success of the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," Mr Constable was looked upon as a bold man when, in 1807, he offered Mr Scott one thousand pounds for a poem which was afterwards entitled "Marmion." Such munificence was quite a novelty in the publishing trade of Scotland, and excited some attention even in a part of the island where literary affairs had heretofore been conducted on a larger scale. Not long after the appearance of this poetical romance, Mr Constable and his partner had a serious difference with its illustrious author, which lasted till 1813, although in the interval he edited for them the works of Swift, as he had previously those of Dryden. An enumeration of the many valuable books which were afterwards published by the subject of this memoir.
