John Pruddah

 Richard Samways of the local history team at Weymouth Museum went above and beyond in providing me with further background information on John Pruddah, the owner of a major circulating library in Weymouth, in the 1870s. 

Curiously, a book with a label from his library, pasted over a Mudie's label, turned up in the Stanley Athenaeum historic book collection.

How it got there is important for understanding the mid Victorian book trade in Australia, and hence I began to investigate Mr Pruddah.

John Pruddah was born in the 1840s in Hexham, Northumberland where his father, Edward was a printer and bookseller.

(His brother, also Edward, took over the running of the family business, and after his early death in 1879, his business was managed by Edward junior's wife until it was sold a few years later.

Interestingly an archive of the Hexham Pruddah's jobbing printwork - flyers, posters etc, came to light a year or two ago.)

John Pruddah didn't join the family firm, but moved to London where he worked for Mudie's Circulating Library before buying the Royal Library in Weymouth in 1869 - George III had visited Weymouth for his health, and was arguably responsible for turning it into a fashionable resort. 

Several Weymouth businesses styled themselves as Royal as a consequence, but in reality they had no more connection with royalty than a chocolate royal.

John originally managed the business with his sister and quickly became an agent for Mudie's.

Clean copy of the Royal Library label above, the partial label from Stanley below - click to enlarge and compare

and was offering books for holiday reading. 

In a list published in the local newspaper in July 1872 the books on offer included Middlemarch by George Eliot, Ombra by Mrs Oliphant, Poor Miss Finch by Wilkie Collins, and Robert Ainsleigh by Mary Elizabeth Braddon.

John Pruddah married Lucy Jane Bradbury in 1872 and their daughter Charlotte was born the following year.

In 1875 John Pruddah sold the business, including the stock of 3500 books, returned north to the industrial boom town of Middlesborough - then in the North Riding of Yorkshire, now in North Yorkshire, where he ran a successful booksellers for many years.

So, John Pruddah was obviously a shrewd businessman, but for our purposes the key takeaway is that Mudie's did appoint agents who had a formal agreement of some kind and perhaps an arrangement to be supplied with books from Mudie's stock.

Quite how the books ended up in Australia is still an open question...

(with thanks to Richard Samways and the Weymouth Museum for their assistance with this post)