| Administrative History | William Creech [1745-1815] Bookseller in Edinburgh. He attended Edinburgh University, and originally intended to enter medicine, but was apprenticed to bookseller Alexander Kincaid in 1764, becoming Kincaid partner when the latter's partnership with John Bell dissolved in 1771 - just after the firm had published the first edition of the first book of the Minstrel. His shop became a well-known meeting place, and he published the work of many of the Scottish literati. Beattie had a long and generally happy relationship with him from 1771, both personally and in business matters |
| Description | Details of how copies [of the quarto volume] are to be packed, shipped to London, and insured. Copies for their Majesties will be bound in most elegant manner, one in red and one in green morocco. Forty copies in sheets are ready to go to Aberdeen. Creech will carefully deliver those Beattie intends for present in Edinburgh. The octavo editio is not so elegant as the quartos, but much better than some of the London editions of the Essay on Truth. Sale copies of quarto should not be advertised till subscribers are supplied. Look forward to receiving poems, but several others deserved to be acknowledged |