Andrew Millar (1707?–1768; fl. 1728–1768)

MILLAR (ANDREW), bookseller and publisher in London, (1) Buchanan's Head, near St. Clement's Church; (2) opposite Catherine Street, Srand. 1728–68. Is said to have been born in Scotland in 1707. In all probability he was apprenticed to a bookseller in Edinburgh, as when he came to London in 1728 he appears to have brought with him the unsold sheets of Archibald Pitcairn's Poemata, which was published there by an unknown publisher in 1727 or early in 1728. The preface to the Edinburgh edition was dated, "Edinburgi postridie Kal. Januarias MDCCXXVII", which according to the Old Style was really 172⁷/₈. These unsold sheets were issued by Andrew Millar in 1729 with a new title-page which bore the words "Editio secunda", and the imprint to which ran: "Londini, Apud A. Millar, ad insigne Buchanani capitis, juxta S. Clementis ecclesiam, in the Strand MDCCXXIX". But there is an even earlier record of his settlement in London. In Fog's Weekly Journal for December 21st, 1728, is an announcement of the publication of T. Consett's Present State ... of the Church of Russia, and this names "Andrew Millar over against St. Clement's Church in the Strand" as one of the booksellers selling it. The title-page of the book bears the date 1729, but it was on the market before December 21st, 1728, and Millar was evidently established at the Buchanan's Head before that. His premises were not those previously in the occupation of the Tonsons, father and son, but another house on the same side of the street, midway between the shop of Pownall the stationer and Tonsons's premises at the corner of Dutchy Lane. [N & Q. 12 S. VII. 321.] The Pitcairn volume already alluded to contained several laudatory poems to Sir William Bennett, of Grubbet, one of the early patrons of James Thomson, the poet, whom very possibly Millar knew before he left Edinburgh. One of his earliest ventures was the purchase in 1729 of Thomson's tragedy of Sophonisba, and of a poem called Spring by the same author. The purchase price was £137 10s. [The Cases of the Appellants and Respondents in the Cause of Literary Property ... 1774.] He bought copyrights very largely, and Dr. Johnson has left a testimony to the generous nature of Millar's dealings with authors. To Boswell he said, "I respect Millar, Sir; he has raised the price of literature." On the other hand, as Charles Knight has pointed out in his gossipy volume, Shadows of the Old Booksellers, "Millar made more thousands by Fielding's novels than he paid hundreds to the needy and extravagant author. If Thomson's Liberty were a bad bargain, The Seasons must have been 'a little estate'. Millar had acquired from John Millan on June 16th, 1738, the remainder of the poems that went to form The Seasons and other works by the same author, paying him £105 for those copyrights, and in 1751 he paid Fielding £1,000 for the manuscript of Amelia. Andrew Millar was one of the chief undertakers of Dr. Johnson's Dictionary, and of Hume's History of England. The publication of the first volume of the History at Edinburgh did not meet with the success the author had hoped; but Millar agreed to take over the publication, with the result that the book became a success, and the author was able to say, when in 1761 the last volume was published, that the copy-money he had received exceeded anything formerly known in England, and he had become not only independent but opulent". [Knight, Shadows.] Millar was also the publisher of some good editions of the older writers, such as Bacon and Milton, and he spared no efforts to obtain the best texts. One of his chief helpers was Dr. Thomas Birch, with whom he had much correspondence on literary matters. Some of Millar's letters are now in the British Museum. [Add. MSS. 4314, 6190.] In November 1766 began the great copyright action of Millar v. Taylor. In 1763 Millar had published an edition of 2,000 copies of The Seasons of James Thomson, and while he still had a thousand copies unsold, Robert Taylor printed another edition, and by so doing infringed Millar's copyright. He at once brought an action; but he did not live to hear the successful end of it. The case was brought up in Trinity Term, on Tuesday, June 7th, 1768, and adjourned till the following Term. Andrew Millar died the next morning. Andrew Millar's right-hand man for many years was Thomas Cadell, who had been his apprentice. Whilst Millar was at Bath a few months before his death he wrote a long letter to Cadell on business matters. This letter is now in the British Museum. In it he complains bitterly of Bell, who was issuing cheap editions of plays and poems, "It is as bad as robbery for Bell to supply the market with every book." He recommends Cadell to employ Bowyer or Hett to print the Bishop of Oxford's Sermon, of which he intended to print 1,000, and he finished up by expressing his satisfaction at the way in which Hume's History was selling. "I alwaies knew", he says, "it would get the better of prejudice, for there is real substantial merit in the work." This letter hardly bears out the oft-repeated statement that Andrew Millar retired from business in 1767. If the Autobiography of Dr. Alexander Carlyle is to be believed, Millar was nicknamed "Peter Pamphlet", from his resemblance to a character in Murphy's Upholsterer. By his will he left legacies to David Hume and to the two sons of Henry Fielding.