Thomas Bird Mosher - Publishing

Publishing

In 1891, Mosher published his first book, a poem titled Modern Love by George Meredith, without the author's knowledge or permission. The next year he published James Thomson's The City of Dreadful Night, and the year after that, 1893, he published two books, including his first anthology, Songs of Adieu. In 1894, two more books and the first of his well-known catalogs came out, and 1895 saw a further 8 titles and the first issue of The Bibelot. Thus by 1895, he had published 16 books, and decided to sell his stationery business and publish full-time.

In 1892, Mosher married again, to Anna M. Littlefield.

By the end of Mosher’s publishing program in 1923 there would be 384 titles, 338 reprints of those editions, and 61 “privately printed” books for a total of 783 books grouped into fourteen different series, all limited editions, covering his favorite authors including William Morris, Oscar Wilde, Fiona Macleod (William Sharp), Robert Louis Stevenson, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Walter Pater, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Richard Jeffries, Vernon Lee (Violet Paget), Edward FitzGerald, Walt Whitman, Andrew Lang, George Meredith, John Addington Symons, Robert Browning, Matthew Arnold, Maurice Hewlett, Francis Thompson, Marcel Schwob, J. W. Mackail, Ernest Dowson, John Ruskin, George Gissing, William Butler Yeats, Richard Burton, and others.