Category:The Percy Anecdotes

Joseph Clinton Robertson (c.1787–1852), pseudonym Sholto Percy, was a Scottish patent agent, writer and periodical editor. He was a political radical prominent in the early days of the working-class press in London, and in the debates within the Mechanics Institute movement.

As a man of letters, Robertson is known for The Percy Anecdotes, 20 vols. London, 1821–3 (subsequent editions 1830, 1868, 1869, and various American editions). The volumes, which came out in forty-four monthly parts, were supposedly written by Sholto and Reuben Percy: Reuben was Thomas Byerley, and Sholto was Robertson. The so-called "Brothers Percy" had met to discuss the work at the Percy coffee-house in Rathbone Place in Fitzrovia, from which the work took its name. Sir Richard Phillips later claimed that the original idea arose from his suggestion, made to John Mayne and Alexander Tilloch, to file the anecdotes which had appeared in The Star newspaper over the years. The Percys compiled a collection of anecdotes, on a similar plan. Their success, which was a publishing phenomenon, was as a collection of "gobbets" suitable for social small-talk, or what in modern parlance would be a bluffer's guide to appearing well read. Lord Byron called them indispensable.

The Percy anecdotes. Collected and edited by Reuben and Sholto Percy. Verbatim reprint of the original ed., with a pref. by John Timbs (1868)