Edinburghbooksellerssoc

=Edinburgh Booksellers’ Society Limited=

Company Number: SC000879 Date of Incorporation:22 March 1879 Contact Details: C/O Grant Thornton, 1/4 Atholl Crescent, Edinburgh, EH3 8LQ Operating Details: Active (Private, Limited by guarantee, no share capital) Other names (if known): Function of Company*: Other service activities (9305) Headquarters/Base of Operations Location: Edinburgh Area of Operation: Edinburgh


 * Taken from Standard Industrial Classification 2003, as used by Companies House in 2010

Records
Held By: [|National Library of Scotland, Manuscripts department], Deposit 303

Scope/type: Charter by Lord Provost 1793; Financial Records and Minute books 1776-1958; Misc Correspondence 1796 onwards; rolls of members, committee reports, Company Registration certificates and other material through 1800s

Conditions governing access/use: Financial Records less than fifty years old are not available for consultation. Applications to publish any material from this deposited collection should be made in writing to the Head of Manuscripts Department.

Related records:

Company History
The Edinburgh Booksellers’ Society was established in 1776 when eleven booksellers met to form an association. John Balfour was appointed Preses and William Creech as Secretary. Creech was an outstanding man well known for his encouragement of novel authors. In 1811 he was to become Lord Provost of Edinburgh, a position which was also held by other members in later years.

On William Creech’s initiative the Society petitioned for a Chart of Incorporation to the Lord Provost and Magistrates of Edinburgh. Twenty three members signed the document and contributed £64.1 s in funds towards the formation of the ‘Society of Booksellers and Stationers of the City of Edinburgh, suburbs of Edinburgh and Leith’. The petition was granted on 20th March 1793 and the Society became the first trade association of Booksellers to be formed in Britain. For the first thirty years of the main preoccupation of the Society was the regulation of the retail prices of books and stationery. Although a proposal was made that a permanent home for the Society be set up in Edinburgh the project never went ahead.

Following its incorporation, the Society stipulated that fees should be paid into a permanent fund and that only the interest received be used for the benefit of members. In 1795 the first £500 of Consols were acquired and provision was made for the relief of widows and orphans of members. In 1806 a widow’s annuity was £10. In 1809 the whole amount of the Funds was invested in six shares of the Royal Bank of Scotland at a cost of £1,230, and in 1869 retired members received an annuity of £50. Today and as a result of professional advice, a very substantial and varied portfolio of Investments has been accumulated. Furthermore, the Society has encouraged the provision of annuities and the subvention of educational endowments.

Although membership was mostly male, in more recent times the Society started admitting female members. Originally meetings of the Society were held quarterly in one of the taverns of the Old Town such as Hunter’s or MacEwan’s. On one occasion in 1803 one of the meetings took place in the Britannia Inn, Leith. The Society also encouraged social activities which in recent times have involved visitss to places of historic and natural interest such as Oban, Iona, Braemar and Grasmere, as well as evening excursions and a formal dinner every three years during the office of each Preses.

NB: Notes on company history extracted from Edinburgh Booksellers’ Society, 1793-1993, Edinburgh, 1993.

Other information supplied by NLS Manuscript department, reworked here with thanks and acknowledgements