[2] He is first documented as an apprentice printer indentured for six years to William Earle, a bookseller in Albemarle Street, London, on 1 June 1800 for the sum of £1,000.
[4] In 1806, Colburn acquired Morgan's circulating library based in Conduit Street,[5] from where he published his first books, notably works by popular light novelists translated from French and German.
He had an early coup in publishing Lady Caroline Lamb's roman à clef (and succès de scandale) novel Glenarvon (1816), which went through four editions and sold very well.
Having first set up business again at Windsor for a short time, Colburn paid a forfeiture for breaking the covenant not to commence publishing within twenty miles of London, and opened a house in Great Marlborough Street.
These included Elliot Warburton's Crescent and the Cross, the Diaries of Evelyn and Pepys, Agnes Strickland's Lives and Burke's Peerage.
[7] It was the earliest weekly newspaper devoted to literature, science, and the arts which obtained reputation and authority.
After the twenty-sixth number (19 July 1817) William Jerdan purchased a third share of the property and became sole editor.
[7] On 31 December 1827, Colburn wrote to Jerdan that he had joined the new literary journal, the Athenaeum, "in consequence of the injustice done to my authors generally" by the Gazette.
Richardson established the London Weekly Review in 1827, but was compelled to give it up in 1828; he entered into an agreement under which Colburn would assume control of the journal in return for Richardson receiving a share in the profits of sales of the London Weekly Review.
Colburn ingeniously renamed the publication as the Court Journal, and Richardson's anticipated rewards evaporated.
[12] Colburn was a major purveyor of the fashionable novel mode of social fiction called "Silver Fork" after a phrase coined by William Hazlitt.
), containing works by Thomas Campbell, Bulwer Lytton, Theodore Hook and Harrison Ainsworth, Lady Morgan, Robert Plumer Ward, Horace Smith, Marryat, Thomas Henry Lister, G. P. R. James, and George Robert Gleig.
), contained works by Marryat, Gleig and other lesser known authors on nonfiction subjects, including travel and memoirs, and military-related fiction, "particularly suited to the taste and pursuits of the members" of the Army and Navy.