Isaac James

Isaac James (1759-d. 28 Dec. 1828) was a bookseller, the son of Samuel James (1716-1773), Baptist minister at Hitchin. He came to Bristol in 1773 as a student at the Baptist Academy. He kept a shop as a bookseller, teadealer (and sometimes undertaker) first in North Street and then in Wine Street. He was a member of the Baptist meeting at Broadmead and served as classical tutor at the Baptist Academy in Bristol from 1796 to 1825. He was brother-in-law to the celebrated Baptist minister Robert Hall and to William Button, Baptist minister at Dean Street, Southwark, 1775-1815. During the late 1790s and early 1800s, James collaborated with Joseph Cottle in selling numerous works, mostly by dissenters. Among James’s own works were Providence Displayed: or, The Remarkable Adventures of Alexander Selkirk (1800). He also tried his hand at poetry, including The Pilgrim’s Progress. The First Part: Rendered into Familiar Verse (1815), as well as a polemical work, An Essay on the Sign of the Prophet Jonah (1802). See his obituary in Christian Penny Magazine (1829), 326-28.