Curll, EDMUND

Curll, EDMUND (1675-1747), a notorious London bookseller of the first half of the 18th century. His connection with Court Poems (1716) led to his first quarrel with Pope, who afterwards made the bookseller figure in the Dunciad. He earned an unenviable reputation for the publication of indecent literature, which afterwards received the brand of Curlicism. He was twice (1716 and 1721) at the bar of the House of Lords for publishing matter regarding its members; was tried and convicted for publishing obscene books (1725), fined (1728) for the issue of Nun in Her Smock and De Usu Flagrorum, and spent an hour in the pillory for his Memoirs of John Ker of Kersland. His announcement of Mr Pope's Literary Correspondence (1735) led to the seizure of the stock, and furnished Pope (who has been proved to have instigated its publication) with a sufficient excuse for the issue of an authentic edition (1737-41). Curll did not deal solely in garbage, as is shown in a list of his containing 167 standard works, including Swift's Meditation on a Broomstick (1710), Dr South's works, &c. His Curliad (1729) is styled a 'hypercritic upon the Dunciad Variorum.' It was of Curll's biographies that Arbuthnot wittily said they had added a new terror to death.