James Edwards (bookseller)

James Edwards (1757–1816) was an English bookseller and bibliographer.

Edwards was the eldest son of William Edwards (1720–1808) of Halifax, who in 1784 set up James and a younger son, John, as the firm of Edwards & Sons in Pall Mall, London. John died soon afterwards, and the business was continued by James. A third son, Thomas (d. 1834), was a bookseller in Halifax. Richard, another son, at one time held a government appointment in Minorca.

Messrs. Edwards & Sons sold many valuable libraries. One sale in 1784 was formed principally from the libraries of N. Wilson of Pontefract and H. Bradshaw of Maple Hall, Cheshire. Among others dispersed in 1787 was the library of Dr. Peter Mainwaring. He made frequent business visits to the continent, and accompanied in 1788 his fellow-bookseller, James Robson, to Venice, in order to examine the Pinelli library, which they purchased and sold by auction the following year in Conduit Street, London. In 1790 Edwards disposed of the libraries of Salichetti of Rome and Zanetti of Venice, and in 1791 that of Paris de Meyzieu.

He had purchased at the Duchess of Portland's sale in 1786 the Bedford Missal (a book of hours by the Bedford Master, more correctly the Bedford Hours), now in the British Museum. It was described by Richard Gough in An Account of a Rich Illuminated Missal executed for John, duke of Bedford, Regent of France under Henry VI, 1794. dedicated by the author to Edwards. 'Let me recommend the youthful bibliomaniac to get possession of Mr. Edwards's catalogues, and especially that of 1794,' says Thomas Frognall Dibdin (Bibliomania, i. 123).

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