224 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [High Street.
ROBERT CHAMBERS.
(From a *ate PkOtog~U#h.)
1
volume by the firm in 1868, and is the preface tD
which Robert writes :-
?<I am about to do what very few could do
without emotion-revise a book which I wrote
turreted edifice, that now forms the west side of
Warriston?s Close, and built in 1868. It bears
the legend Gracia . Dei. Ro6erfus . Bruiss, with a
WILLIAM CHAMBERS.
(From a Pktograplr by jokta Lamwrd.)
shield at each end, one having the arms sf Bruce
of Binning in Linlithgowshire, impaled with those
of Preston-three unicorns? heads.
The eminent publishers, whose extensive premises
now occupy the west side of Warriston?s
Close, William and Robert Chambers-the great
pioneers of the cheap literature movement-were
born at Peebles, in 1800 and 1802 respectively.
Their ancestors were woollen manufacturers, and
their father carried on the business in cotton at
Peebles, on so large a scale that he used sometimes
to have a hundred looms at work.
He was thus enabled to give his sons a good
education at the schools of their native town, where
Robert passed through a classical course, with the
view of taking orders in the church of Scotland ;
but monetary misfortunes having overtaken his
parents, the family removed to Edinburgh, where
the two brothers were thrown in a great measure
on their own resources, but formed the noble
resolution to try by stem industry to regain the
ground their family had lost ; and a love of reading
led them gradually into the business of bookselling.
William served an apprenticeship, from 1814 to
1819, with Mr. Sutherland, Calton Street, who gave
him four shillings weekly as wages, and on this
small sum-shrinking from being a burden on his
delicate and struggling mother-he took a lodging,
it IS. 6d. per week, in Boak?s Land, West Port, a
ittle bed closet, which he shared with a poor
livinity student from the hills of Tweeddale. Out
)f these slender wages he contrived to save a few
ihillings, and began business, in a very small way,
n 1819, and by the following year added printing
hereto, having taught himself that craft, cutting
vith his own hand the larger types out of wood.
By 1818 Robert had begun business in a tiny
;hop as a bookstall-keeper, in Leith Walk, and
iaving a strong literary turn, he made an essay
is author, by starting a small periodical called
he KaZez?doscoje, the types of which were set up
md printed off by William, in an old rickety
xess, which, he relates, ? emitted a jangling,
xeaking noise, like a shriek of anguish,? when
vorked. After a brief career this publication was
hopped, to enable Robert, in 1822, to write a
rolume likely to be popular-? Illustrations of the
4uthor of Waverley,? referring to the supposed
xiginal characters of the novelist. Of this work
William was printer, binder, and publisher, and a
iecond edition appeared in 1824.
Immediately after its issue he began his ? Traiiitions
of Edinburgh ? (in the plan and production
Df which the brothers anticipated a joint work, that
was to have been written by Scott and Kirkpatrick
S1iarpe)-a book re-written and re-published in one
.
