The Publishers
The publisher of Artists at Home, Sampson Low (1797–1886), was originally a bookseller with a shop at 42 Lamb’s Conduit Street, Bloomsbury, founded in 1819. On June 27, 1822, Sampson Low announced the “opening of a subscription library and reading room that would be regularly supplied with the morning and evening newspapers, periodical publications, and all new works of interest.” In 1837, Low became editor of the Publishers’ Circular, published by the Booksellers Association of Great Britain and Ireland, and in 1848 opened his own dedicated publishing company. Sampson Low, Son and Marston was located on Fleet Street, and its partners included Sampson Low, Sampson Low Jr., Samuel Warren Searle, William John Rivington, Edward Marston, and Marston’s son, Robert.[1]
During the company’s first few years, its principal line of work was book publishing. Expanding from book publication to periodicals and journals, Sampson Low strove to set itself apart from other publishers. Through Low’s connections as an agent for Harper Brothers of New York, Sampson Low grew from a small publishing company to a leading publisher of American works. The company was able to secure valid copyrights for American books in England, paying American authors for their work.[2]
Artists at Home, a monthly series of photoengravings after photographs taken by J. P. Mayall accompanied by short biographies by F. G. Stephens, was circulated by subscription, beginning in March 1884 and continuing monthly. The series could be acquired or subscribed to from any bookseller, as advertised in The Academy and other publications.[3] After the series came to a close in August 1884, copies of the text and photogravures were bound and sold in book form.
Sampson Low fully intended to print a “Superior Edition” of the publication printed on “India paper,” a soft, absorbent paper originally imported from China and used for proofs of engravings, and mounted on papier de Hollande, a luxurious paper imported from Holland, composed of rags, hemp, cotton and linen, and used for limited edition texts. The “Special Edition” would be of Royal Folio size and limited to one hundred copies.[4] Only a few of these portfolios have survived.
Among its other publications, Sampson Low issued a large, leather-bound book titled The Picture Gallery (1872-80), which, in similar fashion to Artists at Home, contained eighty-six fine-art print reproductions of late Victorian paintings.[5] These opulent publications set Sampson Low apart from other publishers of the time. The company continued to expand after the elder Sampson Low retired in 1875. He died in 1891, but the business continued until 1964 and is still thriving today.[6]
The Chiswick Press, founded in 1811, was the printer of Artists at Home. The Press was held in high regard and credited with reintroducing quality printing to England in 1844, with the publication of The Diary of Lady Willoughby.[7] The Press became especially influential in the field of English printing and typography under Charles Whittingham II (1795–1876), who published some of the early designs of William Morris.[8]
The Chiswick Press, founded in 1811, was the printer of Artists at Home. The Press was held in high regard and credited with reintroducing quality printing to England in 1844, with the publication of The Diary of Lady Willoughby.[7] The Press became especially influential in the field of English printing and typography under Charles Whittingham II (1795–1876), who published some of the early designs of William Morris.[8]
[1] Laurel Brake and Marysa Demoor, Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Journalism in Great Britain and Ireland (London: The British Library, 2009), 555.
[2] Ibid.
[3] “Sampson Low, Marston, & Co.’s New Publications,” The Academy, no. 613 (February 2, 1884): 71.
[4] Book sizes were not standardized at that time and depended on the size of full sheets of paper: a Royal Folio-sized book would have been around 20 inches (127 cm) tall, with no specification of width. “Book Sizes,” 1966, accessed October 27, 2016, http://www.trussel.com/books/booksize.htm.
[5] Anon. Picture Gallery Annual (London: Sampson Low, 1877).
[6] Brake and Demoor, Nineteenth-Century Journalism, 555. For Sampson Low, see http://www.sampsonlow.com/
[7] Leonard Montague Harrod and Raymond John Prytherch, Harrod's Librarians' Glossary and Reference Book, 9th ed. (Aldershot: Gower, 2000).
[8] See Janet Thompson, Charles Whittingham the Younger and the Chiswick Press, 1852-59, PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1985.
For further reading
Marston, E. After Work: Fragments from the Workshop of an Old Publisher. London: Sampson Low, Marston & Co., Ltd.; New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907.
D. Appleton & Co., the first trade publisher to sell magazines by subscription, was a leading New York publishing house by the time it published the American edition of Artists at Home in 1884. Appleton was best known for its Cyclopædia of Biography (1856) and New American Cyclopedia (1857-63; rev. 1873-76) in sixteen volumes, and for publishing such popular books as Joel Chandler Harris’s Uncle Remus (1880) and the first American edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865). In 1881, the flourishing business moved to the spectacular new Waltham Building at nos. 1–5 Bond Street, a six-story, French Second Empire-style building with a cast-iron façade and mansard roof (designated a New York City landmark in 1979).
Appleton may have undertaken to distribute Artists at Home, published as a single, bound volume with blue cloth covers, to provide a kind of British companion to the extravagant, two-volume, limited edition Artistic Houses: being a series of interior views of a number of the most beautiful and celebrated homes in the United States: with a description of the art treasures contained therein, published by subscription around the same time, 1883-84.[1]
LM