'Samuel Bamford, warehouseman to a cloth printer in Manchester at the beginning of the [nineteenth] century, was able to make use of seasonal fluctuations in business to greatly increase the range of his reading: '"As spring and autumn were our only really busy seasons, I had occasionally, during other parts of the year, considerable leisure, which, if I could procure a book that I considered at all worth the reading, was spent with such book at my desk, in the little recess of the packing room."'