[1] Routledge gained his early experience of business with Thurnam & Sons, booksellers, at Carlisle.

He made his first serious success by reprinting the Biblical commentaries of an American writer, Albert Barnes.

A series of shilling volumes, the "Railway Library",[3][4][5] was an immense success, including as it did Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, and he also published in cheap form some of the writings of Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, Bulwer-Lytton and Benjamin Disraeli.

He also brought out a number of shilling books in "Routledge's Universal Library"[6] (also known as "Morley's Universal Library",[7] the series being edited by Henry Morley).

[9] An illustrated children's book, Wide Awake Stories, was published by George Routledge & Sons, Ltd. Routledge married Maria Elizabeth Warne, who died on 25 March 1855, aged 40.