John Harrison Stonehouse | |
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| Born | 1864 Wilton, Wiltshire, England |
| Died | 27 August 1937 (aged 72–73) Middlesex, England |
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John Harrison Stonehouse (1864 – 27 August 1937) was an English bookseller and Charles Dickens scholar at long-established London booksellers Sotheran's where he rose from apprentice to managing director through hard work and a strong entrepreneurial instinct. He introduced and popularised the "Cosway" binding and commissioned the opulent edition of Edward FitzGerald's The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam that was lost when RMS Titanic sank in 1912. He published a book on the subject in 1933.
He became a specialist in manuscripts and acquired a previously unknown collection of Dickens material relating to a youthful romance between the author and Maria Beadnell, his notes on which were turned into a book published in the United States. He later published a book about Dickens's early life. He also acquired 37 volumes of material relating to the prophetess Joanna Southcott, and a collection of "intimate" letters between the playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan and Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire.
He was president of the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association in 1936. He died in 1937 and received an obituary from the poet Siegfried Sassoon titled "Adventurer in Bookselling". He left little money, forcing his widow to seek financial assistance from his former employers.