Peter Elmsley or Elmsly (1736–1802) was a British bookseller, born in Aberdeenshire in 1736, who succeeded Paul Vaillant (1716–1802), whose family had carried on a foreign bookselling business in the Strand, London, opposite Southampton Street, since 1686.
[1] Elmsley, with Thomas Cadell, Robert Dodsley, and others, formed a literary club of booksellers who produced many important works, including Samuel Johnson's Lives of the Poets.
Miss Wilkes ordered that 'all her manuscripts, of whatever kind,... be faithfully delivered to Mr. Elmsly [sic],' but he died before her.
[1] To the usual Scottish schooling, Elmsley added a large fund of information acquired by his own exertions in later life.
His business career was honourable and prosperous, and many of the leading book collectors and literary men of the day were on friendly terms with him.