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The Confessions of J. Lackington
1804 · 280 pages
The Confessions of J. Lackington
by James Lackington
James Lackington built London's celebrated "Temple of the Muses" and a bestselling memoir that had made light of religion and the Methodists. Late in life he repented, and wrote these Confessions — a series of letters explicitly retracting his earlier infidelity and recounting his return to faith. A genuine recantation autobiography from the Georgian era.
The changed life
The wealthy bookseller whose earlier Memoirs had ridiculed religion turned, near the end of his life, to disown that scorn and profess the Christian faith he had mocked.
Summary
The Confessions of J. Lackington (1804) is a late-life recantation, written by the famous London bookseller as a series of letters. His earlier and hugely popular Memoirs had made light of religion and had been sharp toward the Methodists among whom he had once moved; the Confessions set out expressly to retract that earlier tone and to record his return to Christian faith.
Cast in the epistolary form common to the period, the book is candid about the self that wrote the Memoirs — the prosperous, self-made tradesman confident in his own cleverness — and about the change of mind that led him to disown it. Lackington reflects on his rise, his earlier scorn, and the convictions that reshaped his outlook near the end of his life.
As a firsthand Georgian conversion narrative it is distinctive: not the testimony of an obscure penitent but the public retraction of a celebrated and quotable man taking back, in print, what he had earlier put into print. It is his own account of that reversal, in his own voice.
Who was James Lackington?
James Lackington (1746–1815) was one of the most successful English booksellers of his age. Of humble origins, he built an enormous London bookshop known as the "Temple of the Muses" and helped pioneer high-volume, low-price bookselling, becoming wealthy and widely known. His bestselling Memoirs made him a public personality as much as a tradesman.
Lackington's relationship with religion, and with Methodism in particular, ran through his life and his writing. The Confessions is his late-life work retracting the irreligious tone of the earlier Memoirs and professing his return to Christian faith, and it is the chief firsthand record of that change.
Common questions
- Who was James Lackington?
- He was a celebrated eighteenth-century London bookseller who rose from poverty to run the huge "Temple of the Muses" bookshop and became famous partly through his bestselling Memoirs.
- Why did Lackington write the Confessions?
- His earlier Memoirs had treated religion and the Methodists with scorn. The Confessions, written as a series of letters late in his life, explicitly retract that earlier infidelity and record his return to Christian faith.
A note on the text. The Confessions of J. Lackingtonis in the public domain. What you're buying is our edition — the careful typesetting and design. The original text is also available free here.