Carey & Lea (Philadelphia, Pa.)

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Mathew Carey (January 28, 1760 – September 16, 1839) was an Irish-born American publisher and economist who lived and worked in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Carey was born in 1760 in Dublin into a middle-class Catholic family.<p>
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He entered the bookselling and printing business in 1775 and, at the age of seventeen, published a pamphlet criticizing dueling. He followed this with a work criticizing the severity of the Irish penal code, and another criticizing Parliament. As a result, the British House of Commons threatened him with prosecution. In 1781 Carey fled to Paris as a political refugee. There he met Benjamin Franklin, the ambassador representing the American Revolutionary forces, which achieved independence that year. Franklin took Carey to work in his printing office.
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Upon Carey's arrival in Philadelphia, he found that Franklin had recommended him to Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, who gave him $400 to establish himself. He used this money to set up a new publishing business and a book shop.
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During Carey's lifetime, the publishing firm evolved to M. Carey & Son (1817–1821), M. Carey & Sons (1821–1824), and then to Carey & Lea (1824). Carey retired in 1825, leaving the publishing business to his son, Henry Charles Carey and son-in-law Isaac Lea.
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Lea and Henry Carey made the business economically successful and, for a time, it was one of the most prominent publishers in the country. The business published such works as: The Encyclopedia Americana, a dictionary of German lexicon, as well as American editions of the works of authors Sir Walter Scott and James Fenimore Cooper.

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