Within a generation, Parliament Close would become the center of an extraordinary intellectual transformation.

The same streets that echoed with the footsteps of seventeenth-century stationers would later serve the age of David Hume, Adam Smith, William Creech, Allan Ramsay, and the Scottish Enlightenment.

When Andrew Chalmers entered Gideon Shaw's apprenticeship in 1683, he stepped into more than a bookseller's shop. Shaw's marriage into the prominent Cunninghame merchant family placed his household within an established network of Edinburgh merchants, guild brethren, and professional associates.

Andrew's apprenticeship therefore introduced him to one of the commercial and intellectual circles that helped define late seventeenth-century Edinburgh.