The removal of Mr. Thomas Nelson’s book-store to the picturesque tenement at the Bowhead marks the first progressive step of the young innovator. The venerable timber-fronted land projected with each successive story in advance of the lower one, after the fashion of that obsolete civic architecture in vogue before Newton had revealed his law of gravitation. The first story above the paving rested on substantial oak piers, forming a piazza opening on to the Bow, within which stood the exposed book-stall of the primitive trader. Behind this was the stone-vaulted buith, or shop, as in the old luckenbuiths alongside of St. Giles’s Cathedral. The north façade fronted on the Lawnmarket, a wide thoroughfare, where at certain seasons the dealers in linens and woollens set up their stalls, much after the fashion which the poet Dunbar describes them hampering the High Street before the Flodden wall was built. Already at that early date the printing-press of Walter Chepman, the Scottish Caxton, was at work; and before long the craft had its representatives among the traders’ buiths. In a later century Allan Ramsay began his prosperous career as a seller of his own metrical “broadsides;” and Dr. Johnson’s father, the respected bookseller and magistrate of the cathedral city of Lichfield, was wont to set up his book-stall on market days in the neighbouring towns.
Here then, at the Bowhead, with its north front to the Lawnmarket, stood within our own recollection the well-stored book-stall, the nucleus and germ of the great Parkside printing establishment, with its hundreds of workmen in every branch of the trade. The busy scene of a market day in the old locality, as it could still be seen sixty-five years ago, is graphically depicted in Turner’s view of the High Street, engraved in 1825 for Sir Walter Scott’s “Provincial Antiquities.” The book-trade, as prosecuted by Mr. Thomas Nelson, depended in no inconsiderable degree on the application of the stereotyping process to the production of cheap editions of popular works of established repute. He was a pioneer in the production of literature for the million; but he catered for the taste of an age very different from our own, in his effort to put standard works, already stamped with the approval of the wise and good, within reach of the peasant and the artisan. “The Pilgrim’s Progress” was already an English classic; and with this were issued such works as Baxter’s “Saints’ Rest,” Booth’s “Reign of Grace,” “MacEwan on the Types,” and other works of a like class. To those were by-and-by added Jeremy Taylor, Leighton, Romaine, and Newton, the old Scottish and Puritan divines, and Josephus, all produced by means of stereotype plates, which admitted of a limited issue adapted to the demand of the market. With the development of the business in later years, the issues of the publishing house embraced an ampler and much more varied range. But William carefully treasured his father’s private library. The spirit of the bibliomaniac developed itself in this special line, and the collection of old theological works included many choice specimens and rare editions of his father’s favourite divines. They were latterly treasured in a cabinet at Hope Park, along with other relics on which William Nelson set a high value; and their loss on the destruction of the Hope Park Works in 1878 by fire was one of his greatest causes of regret. From his own choice collection of theological works, Mr. Thomas Nelson made his first selections; but after a time he realized the necessity of catering for the tastes of other classes of readers; and so by-and-by there were added to them “Robinson Crusoe,” “Rasselas,” “The Vicar of Wakefield,” Goldsmith’s “Essays,” his “Deserted Village,” and other poems, along with popular favourites of a like class. Thus prosecuted, the business gradually expanded until the Bowhead establishment was no longer sufficient for the accommodation required.