We have now arrived at the most important and active period of John Newbery's career. Busily as he was engaged during the preceding years, the last twelve of his life, from 1755 to 1767, appear to have been even more fully occupied. His medicine business had grown to large dimensions; his publishing ventures had become more numerous and more important; and his literary associations were more widely extended. Larger numbers of his famous little books for children were issued during this period, and it would be in about 1757 or 1758 that he first became associated with Goldsmith, who from almost his earliest connection with Newbery seems to have been constantly supplied with small advances of money by him, which, as Forster says, “became a hopeless entanglement.” The Literary Magazine was one of Newbery's ventures, and Prior thinks that Goldsmith's first work for Newbery was an article in that magazine for January 1758. Mr J. M. W. Gibbs, the editor of the new edition of Goldsmith's works in the Bohn Library, is however inclined to suppose that he contributed to the Literary Magazine a month or so earlier.

To turn for a moment from books to medicine. We find that in this year (1757) Newbery entered into an agreement with James Grosett of Charterhouse Square, for making and selling the Lisbon or German Doctor's Diet-Drink, the Unguents de Cao, and the Angola Ptisan.