c purchased the wares
they saw before them, and very soon the ingenious caterers for railway
readers flattered themselves that there was a general demand amongst all
classes for the peculiar style of literature upon which it had been their
good fortune to hit. The more eminent booksellers and publishers stood
aloof, whilst others, less scrupulous, finding a market open and
ready-made to their hands were only too eager to supply it. It was then
that the _Parlour Library_ was set on foot. Immense numbers of this work
were sold to travellers, and every addition to the stock was positively
made on the assumption that persons of the better class, who constitute
the larger portion of railway readers, lose their accustomed taste the
moment they smell the engine and present themselves to the railway
librarian.

--Preface to a Reprinted Article from the _Times_, 1851.

MESSRS. SMITHS' BOOKSTALLS.

The following appeared in the _Athenaeum_, 27th Jan., 1849. "The new
business in bookselling which the farming of the line of the
North-Western Railway by Mr. Smith, of the Strand, is likely to open up,
engages a good deal of attention in literary circles. This new shop for
books will, it is thought, seriously injure many of the country
booksellers, and remove at the same time a portion of the business
transacted by London tradesmen. For instance, a country gentleman
wishing to purchase a new book will give his order, not as heretofore, to
the Lintot or Tonson of his particular district, but to the agent of the
bookseller on the line of railway--the party most directly in his way.
Instead of waiting, as he was accustomed to do, till the bookseller of
his village or of the nearest town, can get his usual monthly parcel down
from his agent 'in the Row'--he will find his book at the locomotive
library, and so be enabled to read the last new novel before it is a
little flat or the last new history in the same edition as the resident
in London. A London gentleman hurrying from town with little time to
spare will buy the book he wants at the railway station where he takes
his ticket--or perhaps at the next, or third, or fourth, or at the last
station (just as the fancy takes him) on his journey. It is quite
possible to conceive such a final extension of this principle that the
retail trade in books may end in a great monopoly:--nay, instead of
seeing the _imprimatur_ of the Row or of Albermarle Street upon