[Portrait of]: W. H. Smith, M.P

(No place: no publisher, 1875).

Price: $30.00

Unbound. Small portrait. 2.75" x 4.25" illustration mounted on 4.75" x 6.25" sheet. Small closed tears and some paper loss at top of illustration, else near fine. Color caricature newspaper illustration of William Henry Smith, news agent and politician. By the age of 21, Smith became his father's partner in his newsagent business. Smith began selling books at bookstalls, despite the fact that his father wanted him to remain in the news business. Soon thereafter Smith secured a monopoly of bookstalls on the London and North-Western system. Reading had become a popular for passengers on the railway systems and Smith had discovered ways to easily profit. He had secured exclusive bookstall rights on all the important English railway systems by 1862. He displayed advertisements in bookstalls and from 1851 began leasing blank walls on the principal railway stations on which to paper advertisements. In association with Chapman and Hall, Smith also published cheap, 'yellow-backed' books, entitled the Select Library of Fiction until it was sold in 1883.

Item #281708

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Item #281708 [Portrait of]: W. H. Smith, M.P. W. H. SMITH, M. P.