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MR. WILLIAM LEACH OSBORNE was a real person. He was the son of Ignatius Sancho, a British composer, writer, shopkeeper, and abolitionist. Sancho wrote poetry, plays, songs, minuets, and composed musical arrangements. He also had a wild streak and once lost his clothes gambling! The famous Thomas Gainsborough even painted his portrait. He was left a legacy by the Duchess of Montagu, which he used to set up a greengrocer shop. After Sancho’s death, his son, William Osborne, inherited his father’s shop on Charles Street and eventually turned it into a book shop and publishing house.
There’s just a small problem with this: Mr. Osborne died in 1810, at the age of thirty-five. But, since this is fiction, I decided that this would not be a problem at all. And, since there was another London bookshop owner, another Mr. Osborne, who lived in the mid-eighteenth century, I decided to combine their careers somewhat.
Mr. Thomas Osborne was rather famous for buying up estate library collections, and then breaking them down into individual prices for each book. He even produced catalogues of his books. He died in 1767. This Mr. Osborne didn’t have the best of reputations (there were plenty of comments about his abrasive personality), so I decided to use only his career exploits. After all, there are enough awful men in this book; I didn’t need anymore inspirations.
So, while my Mr. William Osborne was a real person, his career exploits are fictional. Partially of my own making and partially reimagined from Mr. Thomas Osborne of have a century earlier.
If you’d like to read more about famous people from Georgian, Regency, and Victorian London, as well as the everyday lives for people like Miss Susan and Mrs. Taylor, I recommend you check out my non-fiction book, Hustlers, Harlots, and Heroes: A Regency and Steampunk Field Guide. It’s available in ebook and print (and, just so you know, the print’s layout is gorgeous and makes a lovely gift).