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A REPUTATION FOR EXCELLENCE
A History of the Edinburgh Printing Industry
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19 2021
The
story of William and Robert Chambers is part of the folklore of
the self-made entrepreneurs of nineteenth century Scotland. When
their father’s business failed the family moved to Edinburgh
where thirteen-year-old William had to find work and became apprenticed
to Mr Sutherland, a book-seller. When the younger Robert left school
he attended the Latin class at Edinburgh University— for one
day, when he discovered he could not afford the fees. Then, at sixteen
and on William’s advice, he opened a bookshop with a stock
of his old schoolbooks and the remains of his father’s library.
When William’s apprenticeship ended, he first joined Robert
and later opened his own bookshop nearby.
Soon the teenage bookseller brothers moved into authorship, printing
and publishing as well William bought an old handpress and, after
months of painstaking effort, produced and sold his first work,
Songs of Robert Burns. Next he set, printed and bound Robert’s
own Traditions of Edinburgh, which proved an immediate success and
is still in print today. This was in 1819 and marked the beginning
of William and Robert Chambers. In 1932 arrange-ments were made
with T. & A. Constable to under-take their printing including
the famous Chamber’s Journal but the publishing side of the
business still continues in Edinburgh.
The year 1837 saw the beginnings of a firm which was to become one
of the best known of Edinburgh printing firms throughout the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries. Originally founded as William Oliphant
& Co., a new partnership took over in 1841 and the firm became
Murray & Gibb, based in George Street. The business moved to
Thistle Street Lane in 1845 due to the increasing volume of trade.
In 1864 Mr William Oliphant Morrison, a relation of the original
Mr Oliphant, joined the firm becoming a senior partner upon the
death of Thomas Murray in 1872. In 1879 the firm was re-named Morrison
& Gibb, a title it was to retain until its closure in 1985.
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Volume 1, published 1990
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