T.Cadell

Artist Info

T.CadellBritish, 1767 - 1793

Cadell, T. (Thomas), 1742-1802

LC name authority rec.

Biography:

Cadell, Thomas, the elder (1742–1802), bookseller, was born in Bristol and baptized on 12 November 1742, the son of William Cadell and his wife, Mary. On 7 March 1758 he was apprenticed by his father to the eminent London bookseller and publisher Andrew Millar, and eventually became Millar's partner in April 1765. When Millar retired two years later, Cadell took over the business altogether with the support of Millar's capable assistant Robert Lawless. Cadell was named one of Millar's executors at his death in 1768. Having established himself in his profession, Cadell shortly thereafter married the daughter of the Revd Thomas Jones on 1 April 1769.

In occasional partnership with William Strahan and later with Andrew Strahan, Cadell continued the business at 141 Strand, London, ‘over against Catherine Street’, as his imprint stated, for over twenty-five years. He published works by the foremost writers of the day and followed his predecessor's example in paying authors generously. Cadell and Strahan had a notable success with the publication of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776–88), for which Gibbon received close to two-thirds of the sales profits (Norton, 44–5). Other popular works included Mackenzie's The Man of Feeling (1771) and the poetry of Robert Burns, which Cadell began publishing in 1787. Praising the successful début of Decline and Fall, Hume wrote to Strahan in 1776 that ‘There will no Books of Reputation now be printed in London but through your hands and Mr Cadel's’ (Letters of David Hume, 2.313).

Nichols recalled that Cadell spoke of the letter B as having been particularly successful to him during his career, instancing Blackstone, Blair, Buchan, and Burns among the authors he published (Nichols, Lit. anecdotes, 9.667). To that list should be added Beattie, Fordyce, Hume, Johnson, William Robertson, Adam Smith, and Smollett. Cadell commented in a letter to Gibbon in 1787, ‘I had rather risk my fortune with a few such Authors as Mr Gibbon, Dr Robertson, D Hume ... than be the publisher of a hundred insipid publications’ (BL, Add. MS 34886, fol. 151). Cadell's publication list also included books by Frances Brooke, Fanny Burney, Catharine Macaulay, and Hannah More. He published the novels of Charlotte Smith as well, until her radical views became too extreme, and in 1792 he declined to publish her novel Desmond.

Cadell was also the friend and publisher of Johnson and, along with Thomas Davies and Strahan, was delegated by a consortium of booksellers in spring 1777 ‘to wait upon Dr. Johnson, to solicit him to undertake the Lives’, that is, the biographical prefaces to The Works of the English Poets (1779–81), a proposal that Johnson accepted on terms very agreeable to the booksellers (Boswell, Life, 3.111). Cadell published Johnson's political tracts of the 1770s and, along with Strahan, his Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775). He later offered Johnson a substantial sum of money for a volume of ‘Devotional Exercises’, but Johnson declined his proposal (Nichols, Lit. anecdotes, 2.552). After Johnson's death Cadell published Prayers and Meditations (1785), a volume edited from the manuscripts of his private devotions. He also published Mrs Piozzi's Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson (1786) and paid her 500 guineas for her Letters to Samuel Johnson (1788).

Popular among his colleagues, Cadell was a founding member of the booksellers' dining club which met monthly at the Shakespeare tavern in Wych Street, Strand. On numerous occasions he joined other booksellers and printers in prosecuting Scottish and Irish printers who infringed their copyrights. Cadell's wife died in January 1786. Of their two children, his daughter married Dr Charles Lucas Eldridge, chaplain to King George III; his son, Thomas Cadell the younger [see below], succeeded in the family firm. On his retirement in 1793 Cadell turned the business over jointly to his son and to his assistant, William Davies.

Cadell remained active in public life during his retirement. He was made a governor of the Foundling Hospital in 1795, served as treasurer of the Asylum, and is said to have regularly attended chapel in one of the prisons. On 30 March 1798 he was unanimously elected alderman of Walbrook ward in the City of London, and served in the office of sheriff, 1800–01. He was master of the Stationers' Company in 1798–9, and a stockkeeper in 1800. He presented a painted glass window to the Stationers' Hall in 1802, which has since been replaced, although his portrait, by Sir William Beechey, still hangs in the company's hall. Cadell also commissioned from Beechey a portrait of his long-serving chief assistant Lawless to ornament his drawing-room. Cadell died at his house in Bloomsbury Place on 27 December 1802 from a sudden attack of an asthmatic complaint. Having acquired a fortune through his publishing business, he left a valuable estate with property in several counties and substantial legacies to his friends, including one to William Davies of £100.

Thomas Cadell the younger (1773–1836), bookseller, succeeded his father in the family business with William Davies as his partner. The firm operated as Cadell and Davies from 1793, although Davies is thought to have managed the business alone until a serious illness in 1813 prevented him from continuing. From that time until his own death in 1836, Cadell directed the affairs of the firm, having relocated the business from the Strand to his house in Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square. Cadell had been admitted to the Stationers' Company in 1794, and was a member of the court in 1831. The position of the firm slipped somewhat in the nineteenth century; although still trying to uphold its former reputation for liberality to authors, Cadell and Davies undertook several expensive projects, including James Murphy's Arabian Antiquities of Spain (1815) and British Gallery of Contemporary Portraits (1822), which put a strain on the business's finances. Cadell married Sophia Elizabeth Smith, sister of the authors of Rejected Addresses, on 11 March 1802, and had a large family, including four daughters and a son, but none of his children carried on the family business, which was sold off after his death. Cadell died on 23 or 26 November 1836, at his residence in Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square, leaving his family in comfortable circumstances. Sophia Elizabeth Cadell died on 11 May 1848.

Catherine Dille

Sources Nichols, Lit. anecdotes, 2.552; 3.386–9; 6.441–3; 9.667 · Nichols, Illustrations, 8.510, 552 · The letters of David Hume, ed. J. Y. T. Greig, 2 (1932) · Thraliana: the diary of Mrs. Hester Lynch Thrale (later Mrs. Piozzi), 1776–1809, ed. K. C. Balderston, 2nd edn, 2 (1951), 694 · Boswell, Life, vol. 3 · T. Besterman, The publishing firm of Cadell & Davies: select correspondence and accounts, 1793–1836 (1938) · J. Norton, Bibliography of the works of Edward Gibbon (1940), 44–5 · R. Myers, ed., Records of the Stationers' Company, 1554–1920 [1984–6] [microfilm; with guide, The Stationers' Company archive: an account of the records, 1554–1984 (1990)] · D. F. McKenzie, ed., Stationers' Company apprentices, [3]: 1701–1800 (1978), 63, 235 · GM, 1st ser., 72 (1802), 1173–222 · W. McDougall, ‘Smugglers, reprinters and hot pursuers: the Irish–Scottish book trade and copyright prosecutions in the late eighteenth century’, The Stationers' Company and the book trade, 1550–1990, ed. R. Myers and M. Harris, St Paul's Bibliographies (1997), 151–83 · The letters of Edward Gibbon, ed. J. E. Norton, 3 (1956) · R. H. Nichols and F. A. Wray, The history of the Foundling Hospital (1935) · will, TNA: PRO, PROB 11/1868, sig. 647 [Thomas Cadell the younger]

Archives Boston PL, corresp. · Duke U., Perkins L., corresp. and MSS · Harvard U. · NL Scot., corresp. and business MSS, MSS 1653–1655 · U. Edin. L., corresp., La ii 646–647 · U. Reading L., corresp. and business MSS :: BL, letters to Gibbon, Add. MS 34886 · BL, corresp. with Strahan & Spottiswoode, Add. MSS 48902–48905 · Bodl. Oxf., letters to Kincaid & Bell · NA Scot., letters to A. Grant · NL Scot., corresp. with Blackwoods, MSS 4005–4714, passim · Yale U., Beinecke L., corresp. with W. Davies

Likenesses W. Beechey, portrait, c.1793, Stationers' Company, London · J. G. Walker, engraving, 1824 (after T. Stothard), BL, Add. MS 38730, fol. 296 · J. G. Walker, line engraving, pubd 1824 (after T. Stothard), NPG · H. H. Meyer, stipple (after W. Evans, after W. Beechey), BM, NPG [see illus.]

Wealth at death substantial; left property in several counties and substantial fortune: Besterman, The publishing firm, ix · substantial; Stationers' Company stock left to wife; value of business sold; Thomas Cadell: Besterman, The publishing firm, xii

Catherine Dille, ‘Cadell, Thomas, the elder (1742–1802)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 [http://proxy.bostonathenaeum.org:2055/view/article/4302, accessed 30 Oct 2015]