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| | William Pickering (1796-1854) |
 | | William Pickering, publisher and bookseller, was born on 2 April 1796 into "humble circumstances," although he was apparently the son of an earl and lady, who were not married to each other, and he was put out to be raised by a tailor and his wife (Keynes 9). |
 | | He was apprenticed at the age of 14 to Quaker booksellers John and Arthur Arch, and the arrangement may have been made by his biological father. |
 | | His standards were "unusually high for a man whose aims were, after all, primarily commercial" and he was, according to his biographer, able to become an expert in many areas, including natural history, entomology, and fly-fishing. |
| www.orgs.muohio.edu /anthologies/bijou/youngcd/pick.html (538 words) |
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