Edmund Curll

Edmund Curll (c. 1675 – 11 December 1747) was an English bookseller and publisher. His name has become synonymous, through the attacks on him by Alexander Pope, with unscrupulous publication and publicity. Curll rose from poverty to wealth through his publishing, and he did this by approaching book printing in a mercenary and unscrupulous manner. By cashing in on scandals, publishing pornography, offering up patent medicine, using all publicity as good publicity, he managed a small empire of printing houses. He would publish high and low quality writing alike, so long as it sold. He was born in the West Country, and his late and incomplete recollections (in The Curliad) say that his father was a tradesman. He was an apprentice to a London bookseller in 1698 when he began his career.

At the end of his seven-year apprenticeship, he began selling books at auction. His master, Richard Smith, went bankrupt in 1708, and Curll took over his shop at that point. His early practice was to work in conjunction with other booksellers to write, publish, and sell pamphlets and books and to exploit any furore to produce "accounts" and arguments. For example, in 1712 the witch trial of Jane Wenham had the public's interest, and one partner wrote a pamphlet exonerating her, while another condemned her, and both pamphlets were sold at all three shops. He also manufactured a set group of newspaper quarrels between the various "authors" for and against Mrs. Wenham to get free advertising.

As a bookseller, Curll's stock was always exceptionally eclectic, and as a publisher, he produced inexpensive books on inexpensive paper. Most of his books sold for one or two shillings, putting them within reach of tradesmen, apprentices, and servants. He carried and published erotic literature and mixed it with serious Christian calls to prayer, "medical" texts, and the like. He also published Whig political tracts. One of his earliest productions was John Dunton's The Athenian Spy, but he also had titles like The Way of a Man with a Maid and The Devout Christian's Companion. Curll also sold medical cures themselves, and he was unscrupulous in promoting them. In 1708, he published The Charitable Surgeon, a feigned book of medical advice on syphilis cures from a pretended physician of public spirit. It explained that one John Spinke's cure of mercury was devoid of worth and that the only efficacious cure came from Edmund Curll's own shop. Dr. Spinke wrote a pamphlet in reply, and characteristically Curll wrote a reply to that and, to create a scandal, made the outlandish claim that Spinke was ignorant and offered five pounds if Spinke could come to Curll's shop and translate five lines of Latin. Spinke did so and used the money to buy some of Curll's "cure," which he had analyzed. In the end, Curll's "cure" was also mercury. Curll kept publishing his Charitable Surgeon, however, and expanded it with A new method of curing, without internal medicines, that degree of the venereal disease, called a gonorrhea, or clap.

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