William Pickering

Who was William Pickering?

William Pickering was an English publisher, notable for introducing cloth binding to British publishing before 1820.

Pickering began working as an antiquarian bookseller before 1820, and quickly moved into publishing. In 1819 he began his series of Diamond Classics – small books set in tiny type, that were offered in a uniform binding of cloth or leather at a price the common man could afford. These are usually recognized as the first publishers' bindings in cloth – an innovation which had a rapid and profound impact on the publishing industry. Not just a publisher of reprints, much original work was also published by Pickering: from 1828 he became the Samuel Taylor Coleridge's publisher, as well as bringing out the first edition in ordinary typography of William Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience. He specialized in scholarly editions of classic authors, both of ancient and English literature, including important editions of Blake, Malthus, Boswell, Johnson, Marlowe, Shakespeare and Isaac Walton.

After William Pickering’s death, the business was carried on by his son, Basil Montagu Pickering; on his death, in 1878, it was purchased by ‘old Mr Chatto’, one of the founding partners of Chatto and Windus and became Pickering and Chatto, a name which survives today as a specialist publisher and bookseller.