Nathaniel Hickman

• formal_name:
• first_date: 1820
• last_date: 1821
• function: Publisher, Bookseller
• locales: Petersburg
• precis: Partner to one Hazzard (208) in a Philadelphia publishing and bookselling firm (1820-22) that conducted a branch store in Petersburg (1820-21).
• notes: Publisher & Bookseller
  Petersburg
  Partner to one Hazzard (208) in a Philadelphia publishing and bookselling firm (1820-22) that conducted a branch store in Petersburg (1820-21).
  The identities of the partners in the Philadelphia firm of Hickman & Hazzard are unknown beyond what can be discerned from the bibliographic record. By 1818, Nathaniel Hickman was operating a bookselling and publishing concern there; in 1820, he evidently took on a partner named Hazzard before opening a branch store in Petersburg. Each store took on a different name, with the Philadelphia concern being advertised as Hickman & Hazzard, while their Virginia shop was advertised as Hazzard & Hickman. The differentiation seems to indicate that one of the partners resided in each locale, with Hazzard living in Petersburg and Hickman remaining in Philadelphia, based on the name order seen in those advertising notices. The Petersburg business lasted about one year before Hazzard joined Hickman in Philadelphia. Their last jointly-issued imprint, also the last published by either man, was issued in Philadelphia in 1822. Their individual fates thereafter are unknown.
  The titles offered in their stores, and those printed for them by Philadelphia presses, were a combination of literary and medical ones. Included among those they published were two of Sir Walter Scott's novels and a Shakespeare collection, as well as treatises by the English physicians Matthew Baillie and john Faithhorn. In what appears to be their last work – The Thane of Fife by William Tennant – they issued a prospectus for The Columbian Observer: A Journal of Literature and Politics, a twice-weekly periodical edited by Stephen Simpson and John Conrad, both early Democratic supporters of Andrew Jackson. Such may suggest that they abandoned publishing books in favor of the magazine, but that paper was printed by Jesper Harding, who had produced their 1821 imprints. After Tennant's poetic work, neither published again, so both disappear from the historic and bibliographic record.
  
  
  No Personal Data yet discovered.
  
  Sources: Imprints; Scharf, History of Philadelphia; Smyth, Philadelphia Magazines; notices in Philadelphia's National Gazette and Literary Register (1820-22).
  
• Related Bios:
  • Hazzard

This version of the Index of Virginia Printing was a gift from the estate of the site's creator, David Rawson. The content contained herein will not be updated, as it is part of the Library of Virginia's personal papers collection. For more information, please see David Rawson Index of Virginia Printing website. Accession 53067. Personal papers collection, The Library of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia.