What's arresting about the English booksellers of the Enlightenment is that most of these merchants sprung from such low station in life. On society's ladder, merchants were only slightly above pirates and other criminals. Here are some phrases used to describe London booksellers of the time: one is " the son of a drunken cobbler," another becomes a bookseller after having narrowly escaped a university education," another comes to the profession after an apprenticeship in "several menial capacities," and one is "unpleasantly familiar with the prison-house." One bookseller came from so unpromising a background that he went into the profession in order to teach himself to read. We find one exception among these English booksellers: " He was different than other booksellers in that he was a rich man."

Taken from The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop a memoir, a history, by Lewis Buzbee