Giant Places:
3 Market Square
When Edward Houlston’s booksellers opened its doors at 3 Market Square in 1779, there was little indication of the publishing dynasty that would become established there. By the early nineteenth century, it was a business transformed, sending an ever-expanding array of titles far and wide and launching the careers of some influential authors.
Enter F Houlston and Sons
In the late eighteenth century, publishing was a regular side line for many booksellers but in Edward Houlston’s shop it was conspicuous by its absence. While he acted as an agent for the weekly Salopian Journal newspaper, he also augmented trade with, for example, the sale of stamps showing duty paid on hair powder! In fact, no printing or publishing went on at all at 3 Market Square until the business passed into the hands of his widow Frances in July 1800. Four years later, she entered into partnership with their eldest son, also named Edward, and it was he who was responsible for propelling the Houlston imprint into the pages of a vast number of titles within just a few short years.
Among Houlston’s earliest publications were the sermons of two local curates from All Saints parish church: Henry Gauntlett and John Eyton — both rising stars of the evangelical revival sweeping the east Shropshire coalfield (of which Wellington, as the primary commercial centre for the entire area, stood on the western edge). In fact, the printed sermon quickly became an early staple of business and, by placing itself firmly in the evangelical camp, F Houlston and Son established a tradition for publications of a religious and morally instructive tone very much in tune with the temper of the times.
Enter F Houlston and Sons
In the late eighteenth century, publishing was a regular side line for many booksellers but in Edward Houlston’s shop it was conspicuous by its absence. While he acted as an agent for the weekly Salopian Journal newspaper, he also augmented trade with, for example, the sale of stamps showing duty paid on hair powder! In fact, no printing or publishing went on at all at 3 Market Square until the business passed into the hands of his widow Frances in July 1800. Four years later, she entered into partnership with their eldest son, also named Edward, and it was he who was responsible for propelling the Houlston imprint into the pages of a vast number of titles within just a few short years.
Among Houlston’s earliest publications were the sermons of two local curates from All Saints parish church: Henry Gauntlett and John Eyton — both rising stars of the evangelical revival sweeping the east Shropshire coalfield (of which Wellington, as the primary commercial centre for the entire area, stood on the western edge). In fact, the printed sermon quickly became an early staple of business and, by placing itself firmly in the evangelical camp, F Houlston and Son established a tradition for publications of a religious and morally instructive tone very much in tune with the temper of the times.
Other Select Titles
An area of particular interest to the evangelical cause was education, and children’s literature increasingly came to dominate Houlston’s catalogue. The overwhelming majority of its output in that area was devoted to a Shropshire-born former Army wife who returned to England in 1816 from a life-defining tour of duty in India. The collected works of Mary Martha Sherwood, and her sister Lucy Lyttelton-Cameron (whose husband was the vicar of nearby Donnington Wood), would form the backbone of the company’s business for many years but its mission of educating the masses was not just restricted to the children’s market.
From the early 1820’s Houlston’s also began publishing periodicals, including The Select Magazine. Supposedly inspired by “an earnest desire to promote the welfare of the rising generation”, it included a bewilderingly diverse array of articles on myriad subjects from Astronomy to the views from the top of The Wrekin, alongside serialisations by authors such as Mrs Sherwood. The Gleaner, which followed some time after, aimed to furnish the working classes with hints to advance their “comfort and respectability” but did not prove particularly successful and was cancelled after a single volume!
A New Chapter
The 1820s proved to be something of a watershed era for Houlston’s, which relocated most of its publishing business to a new warehouse at Paternoster Row in London following a fire at the Wellington premises in 1824. Although Edward Houlston’s third brother, John, was still acting as the company’s Wellington agent in 1841 (operating from premises in the Cornmarket) by that point its days as a provincial powerhouse were numbered. The imprint was eventually sold to Madgwick in 1906 and disappeared from shelves around four years later.
Today, in Wellington, the company’s original Market Square premises retain a link to the past in the form of two decorative tiles depicting print presses, which were inlaid into the shop front by a stationery business that later occupied the site. Around the corner, in Market Approach, it’s also possible to get an idea of the scale of the business from the extent of the premises to the rear of the shop, where most of the printing would have taken place.
