AustLit

William Richman Piddington began his own publishing and bookselling business in 1849, after the death of his erstwhile partner William Avery Colman. Piddington began trading at the same address - 485 George Street - at which Colman and Piddington had been located. The loaction had been home to a book shop since James Tegg established his business there in 1834, and in the 1850 edition of The Australian Manual of Horticulture, Piddington's firm is described as "Piddington (late Tegg), Sydney". Sometime between 1854 and 1861, Piddington relocated to 332 George Street.

Although he published a pamphlet by Henry Parkes (entitled What is Responsible Government?) as late as 1872, Piddington's heyday as a publisher was the 1850s. The majority of Piddington's productions were in the nature of political pamphlets and sermons, but he was also the publisher of Charles Harpur's The Bushrangers: A Play in Five Acts, and other poems.