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Back to article: GEORGE ROUTLEDGE (1812—1888)

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ROUTLEDGE, GEORGE (1812—1888), English publisher, was born at Brampton in Cumberland on the 23rd of September 1812. He gained his earliest experience of business with a bookseller at Carlisle. Proceeding to London in 1833, he started in business for himself as a bookseller in 1836, and as a publisher in 1843, making his first serious success by reprinting the Biblical commentaries of an American writer, Albert Barnes. His fame as a publisher, however, rests chiefly upon the enormous number of cheap books which he issued. A series of shilling volumes called the " Railway Library " was an immense success, including as it did Mrs Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, and he also published in popular
farm some of the writings of Washington Irving, Fenimore Cooper, Bulwer Lytton and Benjamin Disraeli. He also brought out a number of shilling books in " Routledge's Universal Library." Routledge died in London on the 13th of December 1888. After being styled Routledge, Warne & Routledge, his firm changed its name to that of George Rout-ledge & Sons. A branch of the business was established in New York in 1854.