Charles Rivington I (1688–1742; fl. 1711–1742)

RIVINGTON (CHARLES), bookseller in London, (i) Bible and Crown, St. Paul's Churchyard, 1711–42. Born in 1688, the second son of Thurston Rivington, of Chesterfield, he was apprenticed to Matthews, bookseller (q. v.), and took up his freedom in 1711. He must have already had considerable capital, though his father did not die till 1734, as he in the same year bought the business of Richard Chiswell, the large bookseller and publisher in St. Paul's Churchyard, who was just dead. He announced Pierre Jurieu's Practice of Devotion in Easter 1711 [T.C. III. 659] from the Bible and Crown in St. Paul's Churchyard (Chiswell's sign had been the Rose and Crown). The D.N.B. states that his first house was in Paternoster Row, and Mr. S. Rivington says that he moved in 1714 to the Bible and Crown at no. 62 on the north side of St. Paul's Churchyard; but he would naturally have succeeded to Chiswell's house in the Churchyard in 1711, instead of going to another in Paternoster Row. He kept up the religious character of Chiswell's business, and later published for the Wesleys and Whitefield. He also did a large business in publishing sermons on commission. He is the hero of the story of the country vicar who ordered 35,000 copies of a sermon to be printed. Rivington agreed after a protest, and, having sold 17, sent him a bill for some £784, but reassured him a day or two later by confessing that he had only printed 100. A list of some of Rivington's early publications is given in Fenelon's Pastoral Letter, 1715. He was one of the founders in 1736 of the new "Conger" or booksellers' club for buying and selling shares in copies. He and Osborne share the credit not only of publishing Pamela, but of having suggested to Richardson the idea of a collection of letters, which developed into it. He died on February 22nd, 1742, and was succeeded by two sons, John and James, out of a large family; Richardson acted as guardian to his children and trustee for the business till John's majority. [S. Rivington, The Publishing Family of Rivington, 1919; D.N.B.]

RIVINGTON, CHARLES. I quote the following from information kindly supplied me by Mr. G. C. Rivington, a director of the present firm of Messrs. Rivingtons, of 34, King Street, Covent Garden.

Charles Rivington, b. 1688, d. 1742, was my great-great-great-grandfather, and came from Chesterfield to London and served his apprenticeship to a well-known theological bookseller named Mathews. In 1711 he purchased the old-established business of Richard Chiswell in Distaff Lane and removed two years later to 62 St. Paul's Churchyard, where he traded under the sign of the Bible and Crown. Before the early Chapter Coffee House days—in the year 1719—a regular association was formed by a number of booksellers for trade purposes under the name of "Conger." In 1736 a similar partnership was formed under the title of the "New Conger," by Charles Rivington and Arthur Bettesworth, which flourished until succeeded by the Chapter Coffee House in Paternoster Row. Charles was a close friend of Samuel Richardson, for whom he published 'Pamela' in 1740. I have in my possession an oil painting of Charles by Joseph Highmore, which was at one time the property of Samuel Richardson. Charles died in 1742 and was succeeded by his two sons, John and James. The firm continued until the year 1890, when Francis Rivington sold it to Messrs. Longmans of Paternoster Row, and with it went the Bible and Crown, the oldest publishing sign in London. My present firm commenced in the year 1889 under Septimus Rivington, who was a brother of Francis, who sold the old firm to Longman, and who was in partnership with him from 1867 to 1889; so there has never been a year since 1711 to the present time when a Rivington has not been publishing.

According to Nichols the exact date of Charles Rivington's death was Feb. 22, 1742. One of his assistants was William Richardson, who married the eldest daughter of Charles Greene Say. (See 'The Descendants of Robert Richardson,' by the Rev. T. C. Dale (1924), p. 7.

—Frederick T. Wood, 10 October 1931

RIVINGTON, CHARLES (1688–1742), publisher, eldest son of Thurston Rivington, was born at Chesterfield, Derbyshire, in 1688. He was apprenticed to Matthews, a London bookseller, and made free of the city in 1711, when the premises and trade of Richard Chiswell (1639–1711) [q. v.] passed into his hands, and the sign of the ‘Bible and Crown’ was first affixed to the house in Paternoster Row. By 1715 Rivington had published editions of Cave's ‘Primitive Christianity,’ Nelson's ‘Thomas à Kempis,’ and other works, chiefly theological. ‘The Scourge, in Vindication of the Church of England’ (1720), is the earliest book known to bear the well-known sign of the Rivingtons. Charles Rivington brought out one of Whitefield's earliest works, ‘The Nature and Necessity of a new Birth in Christ’ (1737), and Wesley's edition of ‘Thomas à Kempis’ (1735). With Bettesworth he formed a ‘New Conger’ in 1736, in rivalry to the old ‘Conger,’ or partnership of booksellers which had existed in various forms from before 1700 (Murray, New English Dict. 1893, ii. 820; Nichols, Lit. Anecd. i. 340). He soon became the leading theological publisher, and carried on a large commission business in sermons. Writing to Aaron Hill, Samuel Richardson says that Rivington and Osborne ‘had long been urging me to give them a little book, which they said they were often asked after, of familiar letters on the useful concerns in common life’ (Correspondence, 1804, vol. i. p. lxxiii). This was the origin of ‘Pamela,’ commenced 10 Nov. 1739, and issued with the names of the two publishers on the title-page in 1741–1742.

Rivington died at his house in St. Paul's Churchyard on 22 Feb. 1742, aged 64. He married Eleanor Pease of Newcastle-on-Tyne, by whom he had thirteen children. Samuel Richardson acted as executor, and guardian to the children. The fourth son, John [q. v.], and the sixth son, James (see below), succeeded to the business.

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