Edward Chapman (publisher)

Edward Chapman (13 January 1804–20 February 1880) was a British publisher who, with William Hall founded Chapman & Hall, publishers for Charles Dickens (from 1840 until 1844 and again from 1858 until 1870), William Thackeray, Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning,Anthony Trollope, Eadweard Muybridge and Evelyn Waugh among others.

Born in 1804, Edward Chapman was one of nine children in a family of six sons and three daughters of Thomas Chapman (1771–1833), a Richmond solicitor and his wife, Sophia (née Barrett, c.1776-1852). While his brothers followed careers in the Law, medicine, surveying, and engineering, Edward Chapman had “a taste for books, and a meditative, studious mind, and with books he chose to make his life”. With William Hall (1800-1847) he founded a bookselling and publishing business at 186 Strand, London in 1830, having bought out a small journal called Chat Of The Week. Chapman is thought to have had the literary skills to be able to spot a saleable book while Hall had the business acumen to sell it. According to Robert L. Patten by 1835 they were publishing illustrated fiction and magazines issued weekly or monthly. Arthur Waugh, later the Chairman of Chapman & Hall, described Chapman as "a quiet and retiring man.... full of information, and had such a broad, just mind that it was a great privilege to hear his judgment upon any subject."

In 1835 Chapman and Hall published Squib Annual of Poetry, Politics, and Personalities by the illustrator Robert Seymour. In 1836 Seymour proposed to William Hall that Chapman & Hall should publish a series of sporting illustrations by Seymour with short written sketches linking them together in some way. Further he developed the idea of a 'Nimrod Club' of sporting people having adventures as the framework for the sketches and illustrations. Chapman agreed that the work should be issued in monthly parts, with descriptive text by Charles Dickens. However, Dickens, then only 22, was not the first choice as writer. Charles Whitehead, the senior editor in the publishing house, did not have time to complete the work so recommended Dickens on the basis of his recently published and successful Sketches by Boz, also in a monthly periodical format. Eventually, this became The Pickwick Papers, and concerned the adventures of Samuel Pickwick and his friends. In May 1837 The Pickwick Papers sold over 20,000 copies and Hall sent Dickens a cheque for £500 as a bonus above the agreed payment. By the end of its monthly publications Pickwick was selling over 40,000 copies a month and Dickens received a further £2,000 bonus with Chapman & Hall making about £14,000 from the publication.

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