author
Henry G. (Henry George) Bohn
1796–1884
Best remembered for creating Bohn’s Libraries, he helped bring classics, history, science, and other serious reading to a much wider public. His career joined rare-book dealing with ambitious, affordable publishing on a remarkable scale.
1 Audiobook
A Treatise on Wood Engraving, Historical and Practical
by William Andrew Chatto, Henry G. (Henry George) Bohn, John Jackson
About the author
Born in London in 1796, he was the son of a German bookbinder who had settled in England. He entered the family trade, developed a strong knowledge of books and languages, and later built a reputation as a dealer in rare books and publishers’ remainders.
His biggest legacy came as a publisher. In the 1840s he launched Bohn’s Libraries, a wide-ranging series of standard works and translations aimed at general readers rather than a small elite audience. The series became well known for making history, science, classics, theology, and archaeology more accessible and affordable.
He is also associated with the enormous "Guinea Catalogue" of 1841, a famously large books catalogue that reflected the scale of his business. He died in 1884, and he is still remembered as one of the notable British publishers of the nineteenth century.