2005 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
A Study on James Lackington and Other Late Eighteenth-Century British Booksellers
| Project/Area Number |
16520140
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
ヨーロッパ語系文学
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| Research Institution | Gifu University |
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Principal Investigator |
UCHIDA Masaru Gifu University, Faculty of Regional Studies, Associate Professor, 地域科学部, 助教授 (00213447)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2004 – 2005
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| Keywords | book history / booksellers / bookselling / James Lackington / 18th century / Lackington |
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| Research Abstract |
The subject of my research was the eighteenth-century London bookseller James Lackington (1746-1815). I examined the two autobiographies written by Lackington, Memoirs of the Forty-Five First Years of the Life of James Lackington (1791) and The Confessions of J.Lackington (1804), and studied how these autobiographies had been treated in previous researches on this subject. During the process I used the books on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British book history, on which I spent most of the Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research I received this time.
James Lackington was born to a poor shoemaker and became himself a journeyman shoemaker. Deprived of the benefit of early education, he taught himself through extensive reading and acquired a broad range of general knowledge, until he opened his own bookshop in London. His business expanded rapidly as he started selling remaindered books cheaply and sold all the books at the lowest possible prices, making his profits by selling large quantities.
Through selling cheap books, Lackington was deeply committed to teach the pleasure of reading to the people who had never read any books. In his Memoirs he dreams of the day when people at all social levels enjoy reading books. Lackington was a devoted Methodist, and he tried to follow John Wesley's advice "Gain all you can, save all you can, and give all you can" in the sphere of cultural capital, if not in the sphere of money. He spent his life in order to save all the knowledge he could gain through reading, and devoted himself to giving the cultural capital to as many people as possible.
I published the result of my research in a paper called "Dokusho no dendosha, jeimuzu rakkinton" (James Lackington as Missionary of Reading)" (Bulletin of the Faculty of Regional Studies, Gifu University, 18, 59-71).
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