Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart.
Sir Walter Scott to Archibald Constable, 16 February 1823
“Castle Street, 16th February, 1823.
“I send you a letter which will amuse you. It is a
funny Frenchman who wants me to accept some Champagne for a set of my works. I
have written, in answer, that as my works cost me nothing I could not think of
putting a value on them, but that I should apply to you. Send him by the
mediation of Hurst & Robinson a set of my children and god-children
(poems and novels), and if he found, on seeing them, that they were worth a
dozen flasks of Champagne, he might address the case to
Hurst and Robinson, and they
would clear it at the custom-house and send it down.
“Pray return the enclosed as a sort of
curiosity.—Yours, &c.
Archibald Constable (1774-1827)
Edinburgh bookseller who published the
Edinburgh Review and works
of Sir Walter Scott; he went bankrupt in 1826.
Thomas Hurst (1770 c.-1842)
Originally a bookseller in Leeds, he began working in London late in the eighteenth
century; in 1804 he partnered with the firm of T. N. Longman. He died in the
Charterhouse.
George Ogle Robinson (1837 fl.)
London bookseller at one time in partnership with Thomas Hurst; they suffered bankruptcy
in the crash of 1825-26.
