[3] He continued in this profession until he relocated to England in 1849, where he took the name James Campbell, dropping his father's surname in favour of his mother's.
The first appearance of a "James Campbell" in England was in the 1851 English census, in which he was recorded as living at 32 White Hart Street in Westminster, and employed as a compositor (typesetter).
One of the earliest publications featuring the work of "Campbell" (still in Scotland at the time) was Dugdale's risqué newspaper The Exquisite.
Published from 1842 to 1844, The Exquisite contained "... a great number of tales from the French, with a few from the Italian, translated for the most part, if not entirely, by James Campbell ..."[7] According to Henry Spencer Ashbee, Reddie was a serious, exacting collector and bibliographer of erotica.
Reddie was always liberal with his knowledge of erotica, imparting information gave him great satisfaction, and he spared neither time and labor in his research.
[10] On 4 July 1878, in Crieff, Perth, Scotland, James Campbell Reddie died from a "general or wasting palsy" (a progressive muscle degeneration and weakness, eventually leading to death), first diagnosed fifteen months earlier.
[11] Reddie's works include The Amatory Experiences of a Surgeon (1881), The Sins of the Cities of the Plain (1881, with Simeon Solomon)[12][13] and The Mysteries of Verbena House (1882, with George Augustus Sala).