P. J. M. Marks said in 1998 that “the story of the Edwards family of Halifax is the stuff of a Victorian three volume novel.” G. E. Bentley, Jr., tells that story in The Edwardses of Halifax: The Making and Selling of Beautiful Books in London and Halifax, 1749–1826, though not in three volumes and not quite as dramatically as a novel might. Bentley divides his monograph about this bookselling and book-producing family into four sections: part 1 is about William Edwards, and parts 2-4 are about his sons James, Richard, and Thomas, respectively. Of these four figures, James is the most significant: the chapter devoted to William takes up twenty-four pages and the two sections on Richard and Thomas take up forty-seven pages combined, while Bentley spends over one hundred pages on James’s career. The Edwardses as a bookselling family came to an end with the retirement and then death of Thomas.