James Darling (1797–1862) was a Scottish bookseller, publisher and bibliographer.

Life

He was born in

Edinburgh Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian ...

in 1797, and in 1809 was apprenticed to the publisher

Adam Black Adam Black (20 February 178424 January 1874) was a Scottish publisher and politician. He founded the A & C Black publishing company, and published the 7th, 8th and 9th editions of the ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. Life Black was born in Ch ...

. Having completed his term he came to London in 1818 and entered the establishment of Ogle, Duncan, & Cochran, 295 High Holborn, who carried on a trade in theological books. He remained with them until 1825, when he started in business on his own account at Little Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields. For many years he was a member of the Scottish presbyterian church, and was one of the friends of the Rev.

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; subsequently he joined the

Church of England The Church of England (C of E) is the established Christian church in England and the mother church of the international Anglican Communion. It traces its history to the Christian church recorded as existing in the Roman province of Britain ...

. Acting on a suggestion of several clergymen, he in 1839 began a library for the use of theological students. It was at first named the Clerical Library and afterwards the Metropolitan Library. Every subscriber of one guinea was to have the privilege of borrowing from the library any volume he pleased, and subscribers were also entitled to make use of the reading-room as a kind of club, with papers, reviews, and magazines being supplied. The Clerical Library was not successful as a business, and Darling returned to work as a bookseller. Darling died at his residence, Fortess Terrace West,

Kentish Town Kentish Town is an area of northwest London, England in the London Borough of Camden, immediately north of Camden Town. Less than four miles north of central London, Kentish Town has good transport connections and is situated close to the ope ...

, London, on 2 March 1862.

Works

Darling compiled in 1843 the ‘Bibliotheca Clericalis, or the Catalogue of the Books in the Clerical Library and Reading Rooms, 21, 22, and 23 Little Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields,’ a volume of 316 pages, giving an abstract of the contents of all the major works. In 1851 he brought out the first part of the ‘Cyclopædia Bibliographica, or Library Manual of Theological and General Literature: Authors,’ a rival to the works of

Robert Watt Robert Douglas Watt, (born 1945) is a former Canadian museum curator and officer of arms who served as the first Chief Herald of Canada. He was appointed at the foundation of the Canadian Heraldic Authority in 1988, and he was succeeded by Cla ...

and

William Thomas Lowndes William Thomas Lowndes (c. 1798 – 31 July 1843), English bibliographer, was born about 1798, the son of a London bookseller. His principal work, ''The Bibliographer’s Manual of English Literature''—the first systematic work of the kind—w ...

. The first part, ‘Authors,’ was completed in 1854. It contains the names of notable theological authors, gives a short biographical or descriptive notice of their writings, and then an analysis of each volume. The second volume appeared in 1859. It contained ‘Subjects,’ and gave an account of works bearing on the scriptures, a list of commentators on every book, and a list of all the sermons on every verse of the Bible. Darling had then an assistant in his son. A promised third volume of ‘General Subjects in Theology’ was never published. Another work bearing his name is ‘Catalogue of Books belonging to Sir William Heathcote at Hursley Park, 1834,’ lithographed in imitation of manuscript.

References

* ;Attribution {{DEFAULTSORT:Darling, James 1797 births 1862 deaths Scottish publishers (people) Scottish bibliographers 19th-century Scottish businesspeople