The Rev. Hugh Blair (1718–1800): 
The J. K. Rowling of Eighteenth-Century Britain?

This lecture considers the lifetime publications of the Rev. Hugh Blair, who was arguably the best-selling living writer of his day but is now almost completely forgotten. Between 1777 and 1800, Blair produced five volumes of Sermons (not perhaps a promising genre in an ‘enlightened’ era) and the Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres. Each of these works went into multiple editions—authorized and unauthorized—and was translated into several languages. Based on the correspondence between Blair and his publishers and a close inspection of the editions of the works themselves, which number over 150, the lecture considers such topics as authorship, readership, and publishing history on the one hand, and institutional and private collecting, the meaning of rarity and the value of ‘rare’ books on the other. For scholars of the book trade, for special collections librarians, and for collectors more generally, there are some surprising lessons to be learned from the case of the Rev. Hugh Blair.

Sponsored by the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America (ABAA).

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