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Henry Colburn

active London, 1818 - 1858

BiographyLC name authority nr 91025522
LC Heading: Colburn, Henry, -1855

Biography:

Colburn, Henry (1784/5–1855), publisher, was born in Chelsea and began his career as an assistant in the circulating library of William Earle, a bookseller at 47 Albemarle Street, London. Colburn's origins are uncertain; rumour had it that he was an illegitimate son of ‘old Lord Lansdowne’ (Hall, 1.316) or of the duke of York (W. C. Hazlitt, Four Generations of a Literary Family, 2 vols., 1897, 1.168). An input of capital by a secret sponsor would help explain his establishment, probably in 1806, as the proprietor of the English and Foreign Circulating Library at 48–50 Conduit Street, off New Bond Street, London, from where his publishing operations shortly began. Between 1807 and 1815 Colburn published more than 100 works, of which almost half were of French origin or on French topics, a common procedure being the co-publishing of French and English versions. Fiction at this time represented virtually half his output, much of it in translation, with the other main components being memoirs and travel literature. From 1810 lists feature more works by indigenous novelists, notable titles including Charles Robert Maturin's The Milesian Chief (1812), commissioned for £80, Eaton Stannard Barrett's The Heroine (1813), a parody of the Gothic, and Lady Caroline Lamb's Glenarvon (1816), with scandalous matter relating to Lord Byron. Colburn's first ‘big-name’ author, however, was Sydney, Lady Morgan, to whom he paid £550 for the copyright of O'Donnel: a National Tale (1814), which sold rapidly. The same author's France (1817), for which Colburn offered £1000, was well calculated to satisfy public interest in the wake of the Napoleonic war, and subsequent high payments helped retain Lady Morgan's services well into the next decade.

In 1814 Colburn joined Frederic Shoberl to found the New Monthly Magazine and Universal Register, originally projected as a counter to the alleged Jacobin tendencies of Richard Phillips's Monthly Magazine. Among its early editors were Dr John Watkins and Alaric Watts. A new series was begun on 1 January 1821, as the New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal, under the editorship of Thomas Campbell, the poet, whose contract stipulated a salary of £500, though much of the practical work was carried out by Cyrus Redding, who resigned shortly before Campbell himself late in 1830. With the journal's literary and critical emphasis now established, other high-profile editors brought in were Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1831–3), Theodore Hook (1837–41), and Thomas Hood (1841–3), though ultimate control over the magazine rested with Colburn and his closest associates. The proprietorship was eventually sold to William Harrison Ainsworth in 1845 for £2500. In 1817 Colburn also set up the Literary Gazette, an innovatory weekly literary review, which enjoyed a rapid success. After six months a third share was bought by William Jerdan, who became editor, and another third was taken by the publishers Longmans. Colburn's barely disguised manipulation of these journals, and others, for his own purposes soon helped gain him an adverse reputation for ‘puffing’ his own books. When Jerdan proved resistant, Colburn's response was to purchase a half-share in The Athenaeum, which gingerly acknowledged his involvement in its first issue in 1828. Other Colburn journals included the satirical John Bull (founded in 1820) and the Court Journal and United Service Journal, both from 1829.

Colburn disposed of his circulating library to Saunders and Otley in 1824, moving to New Burlington Street, from where he concentrated on his publishing activities. His pioneering issue of Memoirs of John Evelyn (1818) was followed in 1825 by a similar publication based on the newly deciphered diary of Samuel Pepys. Colburn was also the publisher of Burke's Peerage and its various issues from 1826. Most common among his expanding lists between 1825 and 1829, however, were works of fiction. Colburn deliberately cultivated authors of social note, especially those claiming aristocratic credentials. Theodore Hook was initially offered £600 for his novel Sayings and Doings (1824), the success of which led to a bonus of £350 and two further series (1825, 1828). At the time of the financial ‘crash’ in the book trade of 1826, Colburn unlike most rivals continued to expand, more than doubling his output of fiction in that year. During the later 1820s works issued from New Burlington Street set the mould for several new modes. Three new-style fashionable novels—Robert Plumer Ward's Tremaine (1825), Matilda (1825) by Constantine Henry Phipps, later marquess of Normanby, and Thomas Henry Lister's Granby (1826)—triggered a craze for ‘silver fork’ fiction, which also involved female authors published by Colburn, such as Lady Charlotte Bury. Other modes developed through Colburn were the military-nautical novel, with titles such as Frederick Marryat's The Naval Officer (1829), and a new brand of historical fiction by authors such as Horace Smith and G. P. R. James. Colburn published nearly half the total of new novels bearing 1829 imprints, the large majority being in three volumes and set at the premium price of 31s. 6d.

In September 1829 Colburn entered into partnership with Richard Bentley (1794–1871), the printer, the terms of the agreement stating that Colburn should receive three-fifths of profits, with Bentley undertaking the day-to-day running of the concern. One noteworthy product of the enterprise was the series Colburn and Bentley's Standard Novels, which offered single-volume copies of recent fiction at 6s., commencing with James Fenimore Cooper's The Pilot in February 1831. This inaugurated the later, Victorian, practice of following expensive first editions with cheap reprints, and the first nineteen monthly issues of the series carried Colburn's and Bentley's joint imprint until the breakdown of the partnership in 1832. In an atmosphere of financial confusion and personal distrust, Bentley agreed to pay £4000 for his release, with Colburn pledging not to publish new books himself within 20 miles of London. Colburn nevertheless proved congenitally unfitted for semi-retirement: his series Colburn's Modern Novelists, consisting of unsold sheets of earlier novels, was promoted as if new, and in 1835 he set up as a publisher from Windsor, just outside the statutory limit. By an agreement with Bentley in June 1836, Colburn paid £3500 to be released from his pledge, setting up at new premises in central London at Great Marlborough Street. Often vying directly with Bentley, he published in this later period novels by Benjamin Disraeli, Catherine Gore, and Frances Trollope, as well as some profitable non-fiction, such as Agnes and Elizabeth Strickland's Lives of the Queens of England (1840–48) and Eliot Warburton's travel book The Crescent and the Cross (1845).

Colburn's first marriage, reportedly to the keeper of a small circulating library near Oxford Street who later died through drink, remained obscure to contemporary observers. On 2 March 1841 he married Eliza Anne, only daughter of Captain Crosbie RN. They had no children. Colburn retired in 1853, handing over his business to Hurst and Blackett, though retaining some of his key copyrights, which were later (May 1857) auctioned for ‘about £14,000’ (N&Q, 2nd ser., 75.458–9). He died at his home at 14 Bryanston Square, London, on 16 August 1855, his wife surviving him.

Notwithstanding his invasiveness in the publishing world, no single clear image of Colburn has survived. Contemporary accounts mention his shortness in stature as well as his bustling manner and indecisiveness, though Bentley for one felt this last attribute was calculated. While his promotion methods brought protests from rival publishers, and provoked numerous satirical attacks, Colburn's practice anticipated aspects of modern high-pressure advertising. His output alone makes him one of the most significant publishers of his period, and his sponsorship of publications such as the Evelyn and Pepys diaries points to more than just a mercenary literary concern.

Peter Garside
Sources GM, 2nd ser., 44 (1855), 547–8 · J. Sutherland, ‘Henry Colburn, publisher’, Publishing History, 19 (1986), 59–84 · M. W. Rosa, The silver-fork school: novels of fashion preceding Vanity Fair (1936), 178–206 · ‘The New Monthly Magazine, 1821–1854’, Wellesley index, 3.161–71 · M. Sadleir, XIX fiction: a bibliographical record, 2 vols. (1951), vol. 2, pp. 91–122 · R. A. Gettmann, A Victorian publisher: a study of the Bentley papers (1960) · H. Curwen, A history of booksellers, the old and the new (1873) · Lady Morgan's memoirs, 2 vols. (1862) · S. C. Hall, Retrospect of a long life, 2 vols. (1883), vol. 1, p. 316 · A. A. Watts, Alaric Watts, 2 vols. (1884), vol. 1 · Life and letters of Thomas Campbell, ed. W. Beattie, 2 (1849) · C. Redding, Fifty years' recollections, literary and personal, 2nd edn, 2 (1858) · m. cert. · d. cert. · census returns, 1851 · private information (2006) [C. Duncan]
Archives BL, letters and memorandum · Bodl. Oxf., letters and memoranda · Harvard U., letters and memoranda :: BL, corresp. with Richard Bentley and papers relating to partnership, Add. MSS 46611–46614, 46632, Add. Ch. 74760–74763 · Herts. ALS, corresp. with E. B. Lytton · Suffolk RO, Ipswich, corresp. with Richard Cobbold · U. Cal., Richard Bentley papers · University of Illinois, Richard Bentley papers
Wealth at death ‘sworn to be under £35,000’: GM
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Peter Garside, ‘Colburn, Henry (1784/5–1855)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2006 [http://proxy.bostonathenaeum.org:2055/view/article/5836, accessed 20 Oct 2015]

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