One whose business is the making of trunks (TRUNK sb. 7); often with allusion to the use of the sheets of unsaleable books for trunk-linings.
a. 1704. T. Brown, Laconics, Wks. 1711, IV. 2. The True-born Englishman had dy’d silently among the Grocers and Trunk-makers, if the Libeller had not help’d off the Poet.
a. 1734. North, Exam., III. vii. § 38 (1740), 530. The Trunk-maker, who pretended to be the right Heir Male of the noble Family of the Piercies.
1764. G. Williams, in Jesse, Selwyn & Contemp. (1843), I. 321. I hear he has been a pamphleteer, though as yet only to the benefit of the trunk-maker and pastrycook.
1845. J. Coulter, Adv. Pacific, xiv. 211. The hitting of the stick is so very rapid, that it resembles nothing that I know of more accurately than a trunk-maker driving in his nails.
1890. Globe, 1 July, 7/2. ‘All round St. Paul’s, not forgetting the trunkmaker’s daughter.’ By the trunkmaker was understood, in the latter part of the last and the former part of the present century, the depository for unsaleable books.
