Henry Colburn

Henry Colburn (1784 – 16 August 1855) was a British publisher.

Colburn began his career in the London shop of William Earle, a bookseller in Albemarle Street. He then worked as an assistant at Morgan's Library, a circulating library in Conduit Street. He took it over in 1816, and carried on the business until he resigned it to Messrs. Saunders & Otley, to concentrate on light literature. He started off with a coup in publishing Lady Caroline Lamb's roman à clef (and succès de scandale) novel Glenarvon (1816), which went through four editions and sold very well.Lady Morgan's France (1817) was another of his earliest successful ventures. A furious attack in the Quarterly Review (April 1817) did more good than harm to the book.Glenarvon was a harbinger of Colburn's later great innovation, the so-called "Silver Fork Novel," a kind of Fashionable Novel which gave readers the thrill of peering into the lifestyles of rich and aristocratic families.

In 1830 Colburn took his printer, Richard Bentley into a partnership, which was the dissolved in August 1832. Having first set up business again at Windsor for a short time, Colburn paid a forfeiture for breaking the covenant not to commence publishing within twenty miles of London, and opened a house in Great Marlborough Street. He finally retired from business in favour of Messrs. Hurst & Blackett, but kept his name attached to a few books. These were Elliot Warburton's Crescent and the Cross, the Diaries of Evelyn and Pepys, Agnes Strickland's Lives, Burke's Peerage and some more. Their copyrights went to auction at Southgate & Barrett on 26 May 1857, and produced about £14,000.

Colburn amassed a considerable fortune, his property being sworn as under £35,000.

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