George Nicol (bookseller)

[3] By spring 1773, Nicol had already become sufficiently successful to receive the king's informal commission to purchase books on his behalf.

At the sale of the library of James West, president of the Royal Society, fellow booksellers such as John Almon were surprised when Nicol bought almost all available books printed by William Caxton.

"[3][4] In fact, Nicol had instructions from George III not to bid against any buyers who wanted "books of science and belles lettres for their own progressive or literary pursuits".

[2] After Wilson's death, Nicol inherited his share in The Gazetteer and took a close interest in the operation of the newspaper, which published until 1797.

By Nicol's account (published many years later) the idea of an illustrated Shakespeare edition was at least partly his own, and something he had proposed unsuccessfully in his youth to David Garrick.

[1][6] While Martin was working on the typeface, Nicol and Boydell met the printer William Bulmer by chance, resulting in the agreement to establish Bulmer and Nicol's Shakespeare Press at 3 Russell Court, off Cleveland Row at the western end of Pall Mall.

[1][6] With input from Nicol and Bulmer, Martin created a typeface that so successfully combined utility with beauty that experts took it to be the work of the continental master Giambattista Bodoni.

The bibliographer Thomas Frognall Dibdin reports that despite Nicol and Bulmer's satisfaction with the typeface, they were irked by continuing unfavorable comparisons to Bodoni's output.

[7] Bulmer set and printed Cicero's De Officiis on four large octavo pages in a style mimicking Bodoni's output.

Implying that the type was Bodoni's, Nicol showed the sample to various customers, who were so impressed by its beauty that they were anxious to buy copies.

Nicol told them "that Mr. Bodoni had an agent in town; and if they would turn to the bottom of the last page of the specimen, they would find his address".

[need quotation to verify] On 9 July 1787 as Nicol and Mary Boydell were walking up Prince's Street (now the southern section of Wardour Street) near Leicester Square, Mary Boydell was shot by Dr. John Elliot with a pair of pistols tied together.

Elliot was a former suitor of Mary's who had become convinced that she had reneged on a promise to marry him, and that he had thereby lost a share in what he believed to be John Boydell's £30,000 fortune.

[10][11] Elliot was also the developer of the idea that different elements of the retina respond to different portions of the spectrum of light, a theory advanced in a posthumously published medical textbook.

[11][12] At Elliot's subsequent Old Bailey trial, it was argued that he may have failed to load his pistols with shot, or have intentionally used unloaded weapons.

Elliot remained charged with assault and was remanded to Newgate Gaol, where he refused food and water and died on 22 July 1787.