no one Publisher or Bookseller, whose spirit and labours have as yet had time to justify a claim to a niche in the "History of Booksellers," has been altogether passed over. In the course of our "History," too, we have been necessarily concerned with the manner of the "equipping and furnishing" of nearly every great work in our literature. So that, while on the one hand we have related the lives of a body of men singularly thrifty, able, industrious, and persevering—in some few cases singularly venturesome, liberal, and kindly-hearted—we have on the other, by our comparative view, tried to throw a fresh, at all events a concentrated, light upon the interesting story of literary struggle.
No work of the kind has ever previously been attempted, and this fact must be an apology for some, at least, of our shortcomings.
November, 1873.
