State Lottery 1761. … Sold and Registered by A. and C. Corbett, Booksellers and Publishers, at their Correct State Lottery Office, .. at Addison’s-Head, facing St. Dunstan’s Church, Fleet-Street. Broadside not recorded in ESTC. Tipped onto final page of A New and Easy Method to Understand the Roman History … Translated from the French, with very large additions and amendments, by Mr. Tho. Brown.(London, 1748). Call number (Ex) 2012-0846N

“1808, May 8. Died, Sir Charles Corbett, bart. one of the oldest liverymen of the company of stationers, aged about 76. He was, in the outset of life, well known as a bookseller, opposite St. Dunstan’s church; where he afterwards kept a lottery-office; had dame Fortune at his command; and used to astonish the gaping crowd with the brilliancy of his nocturnal illuminations. But it is not in the power of the keeper of a lottery-office to command success. A very unfortunate mistake in the sale of a chance of a ticket, which came up a prize of £20,000, proved fatal to Mr. Corbett, and was with difficulty compromised, the chance having fallen into the hands of Edward Roe Yeo, esq, at that time M.P. for Coventry. Some years after, the empty title of baronet (a title, in his case, not strictly recognised in the college of arms) descended to Mr. Corbett, which he assumed, though he might have received a handsome douceur from some other branch of the family if he would relinquish it.—Melancholy to relate! the latter days of this inoffensive character were clouded by absolute penury. Except a very trifling pension from the company of stationers, he had no means of subsistence but the precarious one of being employed, when his infirmities and bad state of health would permit him, in a very subordinate portion of the labours of a journeyman bookbinder.” – Charles Henry Timperley, The Dictionary of Printer and Printing, with the Progress of Literature (London, 1839) p. 832

❧ There is a copy of Ann and Charles Corbett’s lottery broadside for the year before (1760) held at OSU. [Link]

Booklabel: Simon Villers, His Book, Coventry, April 12, 1763, pasted onto front free endpaper of A New and Easy Method to Understand the Roman History … Translated from the French, with very large additions and amendments, by Mr. Tho. Brown.(London, 1748). Call number (Ex) 2012-0846N