Portret van Edward Daniell, boekhandelaar te Londen 1892

This print of Edward Daniell, the London bookseller, was made by his son-in-law, J.E. Mowatt, in 1892. Daniell was, according to the text below the print, “the father of the London second-hand book trade.” Daniell’s portrait is presented in an oval shape, and his head and shoulders are centrally placed. The print commemorates Daniell as an individual businessman, but it also gestures towards the wider bookselling industry of late 19th century London, and how it operated as a social sphere. By naming Daniell as the ‘father’ of his trade, the text speaks to the way a powerful figure in London sought to institutionalize a specifically London-based cultural institution. This portrait is, in a sense, a bid to put Daniell on the London cultural map. To understand this image better, historians could research London’s bookselling industry in the late 19th century, as well as the role of booksellers in the Victorian social sphere.