200 YEARS PUBLISHING.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIV, Issue 1188, 10 December 1924, Page 12

200 YEARS PUBLISHING.

WHEN LONGMAN’S PAID LORD MACAULAY £20,000. The House of Longman, now known as Messrs Longman, Green and Company, in October completed 200 years of continuous activity, mainly under the control of one family. Mr Harold Cox, in an article in the Edinburgh Review, says the House ot Longman had its origin in the enterprise of ’Thomas Longman, one of the junior members of a family established in Bristol as soap makers, who in 1724 bought for £2232 9s (id the publisher’s and bookseller’s business in Paternoster Row, E.C., ol William Taylor, who had live years previously published the first authentic edition ol “Robinson Crusoe.” The House of Longman is still carrying on a businesss of the same character on the same site. It was in 1746 that Dr. Johnson signed an agreement with the firm to produce his dictionary. He was to receive £L575, and the dictionary took nine years to complete. Shortly before the end of that period the publishers met Dr. Johnson at a tavern for a settlement of accounts. Johnson had apparently overdrawn the agreed sum, but the publishers decided that he should he forgiven his debt and his share of tho entertainment paid for by those present. In 1842 Lord Macaulay ottered to Longmans the copyright of liis “Lays of Ancient Rome,” and later his “History of England,” and in 1856 tho firm paid him £20,000 on account of the profits of the third and fourth volumes of his history. They paid £10,001) to Lord Beaconsfield for the copyright of “Endymion.”