and the reverse read "HALFPENNY of J. LACKINGTON & Co." "CHEAPEST BOOKSELLERS IN THE WORLD." Lackington became somewhat of a celebrity in London. A flag would fly above the bookstore when he was present, and he rode through the streets in a custom stagecoach, inscribed with his personal motto: “Small profits do great things.” A catalogue of Lackington's available inventory was regularly printed, and book orders were fulfilled for places as far away as the United States. According to Lackington, the first edition of his catalogue contained 12,000 titles. Lackington wrote two autobiographies: Memoirs of the First Forty-Five Years of the Life of James Lackington (1791) and The Confessions of James Lackington (1804), to which Letters, on the bad consequences of having daughters educated at Boarding Schools was later appended. Personal life Lackington considered himself to have been blessed with two happy marriages, the first to Nancy, who died of fever, then Dorcas. In 1798, Lackington retired to his estate in Gloucestershire and became a part-time Methodist preacher, leaving the Temple of the Muses to his third cousin George Lackington. In 1841, the 'Temple of the Muses' was destroyed in a fire and was never rebuilt. Tributes Lackington's Magazine, a Canadian speculative fiction quarterly that keeps content accessible to anyone with an internet connection, is named in honor of James Lackington. Every cover image features a nod to a book hoard and Lackington's era, the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. References Further reading Arthur Mee. The King's England: Devon (Hodder and Stoughton 1965), pp. 71–2. 18th-century English businesspeople 1746 births 1815 deaths People from Wellington, Somerset English booksellers Bookshops in London