The Collector

The railway has nearly made the old inn obsolete: lavender-scented linen and crackling fires give way to coal smoke, green blinds, and meals snatched between trains. What has vanished with the welcome?

In this mid-19th-century essay, Henry T. Tuckerman looks back at the English inn as more than a place to sleep: it is a meeting ground for travellers, wits, and writers, and a small portrait of a nation. With affectionate humour, he recalls the hosts and firesides that inspired authors from Addison to Dickens, while measuring them against the hurried modern world. The essay opens a collection that ranges from books and newspapers to pictures, holidays, doctors, actors, and preachers, always alert to the customs behind everyday things. If the inn once offered a warmer welcome, what does its decline reveal about the way we live now?

With centuries of literature, it's inevitable that some will fall through the cracks. We hunt down public domain works and restore them so they're not lost to the world.

Who are we? We're Cairn Press. Our background is in design, publishing, typography, and technology. These skills fuel our mission to create the highest quality Public Domain eBooks available online, at an affordable price. We give them the treatment they deserve; our proprietary process restores books for a better overall user experience in design, readability, and e-reader compatibility.