George Miller
HeadingGeorge Miller [NLS-SBTI]
Dates of Activity1789-1809
Activity Notebookseller
1789: circulating library
General NoteThe India Tea Warehouse ... Agricultural, Commercial, Military Intelligence, News and Reading Room 1811
Born 14 January 1771 son of James Miller, general merchant in Dunbar and Elizabeth Wilson. His mother died when he was six. George Miller was apprenticed to Alexander Smart, bookseller and bookbinder in Dunbar for four years on 20 September 1785. In January 1788, Smart returned to Edinburgh, from which he had originally come. In September 1788 the indenture was cancelled and Miller returned to Dunbar. He was to go into partnership with his brother James, but they quarreled, and his father persuaded George to go to England for the experience. He was working for a Newcastle bookseller called Miller, when he was summoned home, because his father was dying. His father died 27 June 1789. He started as a grocer, but was given a printing press as a wedding present in 1795, and eked out his grocery business with general and jobbing printing, including some chapbooks. He tended to the improving kind of chapbook, and published a series with the title 'Cheap tracts calculated to promote the interests of Religion, Virtue and Humanity', and two chapbook magazines “The Cheap Magazine” from January to December 1815, and later “The Monthly Monitor and Philanthropic Museum”. He had a second shop in Haddington to which he transferred the printing press in 1804, where it was operated by his son James under the title George Miller & Son from 1812-16. The “Cheap Magazine” was published from there. Miller was an enterprising man and for a time ran an extensive business as an auctioneer to the book trade. His business however was caught up in the trade recession after the Napoleonic wars, and though he struggled manfully, he was declared bankrupt in 1817 and had given up bookselling by 1823.
1799: [Place uncertain]: High Street.
See Also J.& G. Miller (grocers and booksellers; Dunbar), (1789-1791)
G. Millers Circulating Library, (1792)
East Lothian Press, (1795-1804)
Dunbar and Country Circulating Library, (1809)
SourceGeorge Miller. “Latter struggles in the journey of life”. Edinburgh, 1833
Last Edit2016-11-16 12:00:00