Thomas Norton Longman

Thomas Norton Longman (1771–1842) was an English publisher, who succeeded to the Longman's publishing business in 1793. Biography Thomas Norton Longman was born in England, son of Thomas Longman (1730–1797), and his wife, Elizabeth Harris (1740-1808). He was also the great nephew of Thomas Longman (1699-1755) who founded the Longman publishing house in 1724. Longman was the eldest of twelve siblings and the third generation Longman to run the family’s lucrative publishing business. It was Longman who in 1799 purchased a major share in the copyright of Lindley Murray’s English Grammar, which had an annual sale of about 50,000 copies. This and other works by Murray added to a sizeable backlist of widely used Longman educational books – soon to appear regularly in separate catalogues – most of them regarded as textbooks. Longman interest published extensively for the theatre in early nineteenth century. It has sometimes been suggested that this line of business was the result of the marriage of his father in 1760 to the sister of Thomas Harris, who for many years was the proprietor and manager of Covent Garden, one of the three licensed theatres in London at that time. In fact, Longman had previously published several plays performed outside London. The Longman interest in the theatrical market is also reflected in translations of plays, among them August von Kotzebue’s The East Indian (1799). Some British dramatists had the majority of their books published by Longman; others were ‘printed under the authority of and by permission of the managers from the prompt books’. Longman playwrights included John O’Keeffe (1747–1833), William Pearce (1738–95), Thomas Morton (1764–1838) and Frederick Reynolds (1764–1841). Longman also purchased the copyright from Joseph Cottle, of Bristol, of Southey's Joan of Arc and Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads. He published the works of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey and Scott, and acted as London agent for the Edinburgh Review, which was started in 1802.