The firm of Boosey & Co. originated as a lending library which was founded by John Boosey. His family, which is of Franco-Flemish origin, came over from the Continent and settled in Essex in the early part of the fifteenth century. They were cloth spinners and were probably invited to this country to bring with them the latest cloth spinning methods from the Lowlands, since this was a major industry in East Anglia during the middle ages and competition with the Continent was always very fierce. The family, who continued to ply their trade for many generations, lived at Bocking, which is where John Boosey was born in 1740. It is not possible to give an exact date for his founding of the library. He was admitted to the freedom of the City of London in 1773 so the date would probably have been some time between 1765 and 1770. Another link with the past is to be found in the archives of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Correspondence with the family when they lived in King Street shows that they were on friendly terms, and the circulating library to which a stranger gave him a ticket, and to which he used to slip out from school, was not, as had been supposed, the Guildhall library (which was not reconstituted till 1824) but John Boosey's library.