A Companion to the History of the Book (48 page)

With this chronology in mind, it is useful to think of the pre-1801 period of American printing in three distinct phases: the beginnings to about 1740, 1740 to 1776, and 1776 to 1800. By 1740, the printing trade was firmly established, and, as James N. Green has argued, there was by this time a good deal of competition (see Hall and Amory 2000). There were fifteen printing shops operating in nine towns, with five in Boston, two each in New York and Philadelphia, and single shops in Charleston, Williamsburg, Annapolis, Germantown, New London, and Newport. The number of newspapers had tripled to twelve, with fiercely competitive markets in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. Newspapers provided printers with a new source of income that freed them from the economic control of colonial governments and provided a forum for opinions that the authorities found increasingly difficult to hold in check. By 1740, the five printers in Boston were each issuing their own newspapers. More than any other factor, the rise of newspapers changed the nature of printing in the British colonies.

At the same time, the rate of printing of books and pamphlets accelerated rapidly. The output of the presses became more and more varied as a wider market developed for materials beyond subsidized governmental publications, broadsides, sermons, and theological works. Consider the case of the Bible and its marketability. While Psalters, New Testaments, and other selections from the Bible were printed with some frequency in early America, the Bible itself was rarely attempted. It was far too complex and expensive for the average printing shop. In any case, only the universities of Oxford and Cambridge and the king’s printer enjoyed the privilege of publishing the Authorized Version. As a result, Bibles were a staple of the import trade. The first Bible printed in the New World was the Eliot Indian Bible (1663), a monumental effort typographically and linguistically. The first American Bible printed in a European language was in German in 1743. The first English Bible was printed by Robert Aitken in Philadelphia in 1782, more as an exercise in patriotism than as a bookselling venture: it included a resolution of Congress “recommend[ing] this edition of the Bible to the inhabitants of the United States . . .” This Bible was, in fact, a subscription book, and not a very successful one. But in a few more years Bible printing would become a sound business venture. More than thirty American editions of the English Bible appeared between 1788 and 1800, led by the efforts of Isaiah Thomas in Worcester.

One of the first publications to issue from the press in English North America was
An Almanack for New England
for 1639, printed by Stephen Daye in Cambridge (no copy has survived). In a preindustrial, predominantly rural country, the almanac was a necessity, used by individuals from all walks of life, a household fixture that was often kept hanging on a string from the fireplace mantle. Many almanacs were also used as diaries, George Washington being perhaps the most famous almanac diarist. In addition to monthly calendars and tables of astronomical events, almanacs included advice for farmers, medical and domestic receipts, and miscellaneous literary fare. In all its diversity, the almanac had one great theme: time itself. As Nathaniel Ames expressed it in his almanac for 1744:

This little book serves well to help you date
And settle many petty worldly Things,
Think on the Day writ in the Book of Fate,
Which your own final dissolution brings.

Unlike their English counterparts, which often emphasized astrology and necromancy, the earliest almanacs in America stressed practical instruction and improvement, a reflection first of Puritan influence (seventeenth-century Harvard students, most of them destined for the ministry, were some of the earliest compilers of almanacs) and later of the more enlightened intellectual climate of the eighteenth century. Even so, most almanacs featured the “man of signs” or “the Anatomy,” a crude woodcut of a human figure, with corresponding links to the signs of the zodiac governing various parts of the body. While the compilers were always quick to say that they themselves were not practitioners of astrology, they included “the Anatomy” to appeal to “common” readers.

As printing spread in the colonies, almanacs followed as a matter of course. William Bradford published the first almanacs in Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, 1686) and New York (1694), Timothy Green the first Connecticut almanac (New London, 1709). In Newport, James Franklin, elder brother of Benjamin, assumed the pseudonym “Poor Robin” and printed the
Rhode-Island Almanack
for 1728. In Maryland, John Warner produced
An Almanack for 1
729, and
The South-Carolina Almanack
was advertised for sale in Charleston in 1733. In Williamsburg, Theophilus Grew’s
Almanack for 1735
was advertised by the printer William Parks, who had moved to the Virginia capital from Annapolis. New Hampshire’s first was
An Astronomical Diary
for 1757, printed in Portsmouth by Daniel Fowle.
Poor Roger 1760: The American Country Almanac
was printed in Woodbridge, New Jersey by James Parker,
The Wilmington Almanack
for 1762 was printed in Delaware by Thomas Adams, and
The Georgia and South-Carolina Almanack
for 1764 was printed in Savannah by James Johnston. Not until after the War of Independence were almanacs printed in North Carolina (New Bern, for 1784), Vermont (Bennington, 1784), and Maine (Portland, 1786).

The most famous compiler of almanacs in the eighteenth century was, of course, Benjamin Franklin. Assuming the mantle of Richard Saunders, Franklin issued his first
Poor Richard
in Philadelphia in 1733, and remained personally involved in the series until 1758. “I endeavored to make it both entertaining and useful,” he wrote in his
Autobiography,
“and it accordingly came to be in such demand, that I reap’d considerable profit from it, vending annually near ten thousand.” Records indicate that
Poor Richard
was distributed not only in Philadelphia but throughout the colonies. The reasons for its success are not hard to find. Franklin had a knack for coining or adapting a proverbial phrase (“Men & melons are hard to know,” “Hunger never saw bad bread,” “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise”) but so did many other compilers of almanacs. Franklin’s genius was revealed in the personal essays that accompanied each edition. Through his prefaces, Franklin created a fictional character who assumed a life of his own – Poor Richard’s wife Bridget even contributed an essay one year. Engaging, witty, and lively, Franklin’s almanacs still make for entertaining reading.

Readers had certain expectations for their almanacs, and unnecessary innovation was not welcomed. As a rule, almanacs came with an explanation of the calendar, a list of eclipses for the year, the names and characters of planets, signs of the zodiac, and “the Anatomy.” They included such practical things as interest tables, courts and court days, lists of government officials, population tables, postal rates, bank officers, exchange rates, and time and place of religious meetings. For studying the development of local economies on the frontier, almanacs are useful sources. They are also anthologies of popular literature: epigrams, ballads, songs, satires, elegies, odes, epistles, essays, jokes, legends, proverbs, and anecdotes.

Almanacs were used effectively as propaganda in the American Revolution, supporting the patriots’ cause through verse, essays, and graphic illustrations. Before and during the War of Independence, the American press produced hundreds of polemical pamphlets, posted thousands of broadsides, and filled their newspapers with essays, letters, extracts of speeches, satirical and patriotic poetry, as well as official proclamations. In the year of the Stamp Act, John Adams noted in his diary: “Innumerable have been the Monuments of Wit, Humour, Sense, Learning, Spirit, Patriotism, and Heroism, erected in the several Colonies and Provinces, in the Course of the Year. Our Presses have groaned, our Pulpits have thundered, our Legislatures have resolved, our Towns have voted . . .” (December 18, 1765). Compared to the more modest output of the preceding years, the publications of 1765 (354 surviving imprints) must have seemed “innumerable” to Adams or any other observer. The number of American imprints would continue to rise, peaking in the eventful years of 1774 (819 surviving), 1775 (997), and 1776 (741), falling off during the rest of the war, and rising again once peace was established in 1783. By 1790, American printers were producing more than a thousand titles, and by 1800, more than two thousand.

Writing to Thomas Jefferson in 1815, Adams looked back at the transforming events he had witnessed and shaped, concluding:

The Revolution was in the minds of the people, and this was effected, from 1760 to 1775, in the course of fifteen years before a drop of blood was shed at Lexington. The records of thirteen legislatures, the pamphlets, newspapers in all the colonies, ought to be consulted during that period to ascertain the steps by which the public opinion was enlightened and informed concerning the authority of Parliament over the colonies.

Following Adams’s suggestion, consider “the steps,” the distribution, of the Declaration of Independence. On July 8, 1776, four days after it was adopted by the Continental Congress, the self-evident truths of this document were proclaimed to an assembled crowd in Philadelphia. In New York on July 8, the Declaration was read to George Washington’s troops. However dramatic and forceful these oral presentations might have been, most Americans learned of the political separation from Great Britain through printed sources. The Declaration was printed in at least seventeen American editions in 1776 and 1777, while also being reprinted in virtually all the newspapers. The first printing in Massachusetts, for example, was in the July 17 edition of the
Massachusetts Spy,
a patriot newspaper published by Isaiah Thomas in Worcester.

Of course, the Declaration of Independence did not appear in a vacuum. When readers opened the
South Carolina
Georgia Almanack
for 1777, they found a text of the Declaration along with more mundane information that helped them order their daily lives. Those almanac readers had grown accustomed to political as well as practical advice over the years. William Pitt’s “Speech for the Removal of the Stamp Act” was printed in the
South Carolina
Georgia Almanack
for 1767. “A Question of Taxation without Representation by a Gentleman of South Carolina” appeared in the almanac for 1771, and was followed in 1775 by the essay “Liberty the Birthright of Man.” The Declaration of Independence, then, was part of an ongoing print debate in all the colonies.

Print performed several key functions in transforming subjects of the British crown into independent citizens of the United States. First, there was a new emphasis on the diffusion of learning. “Without Knowledge among the People,” wrote Isaac Collins in his prospectus for the
New-Jersey Gazette
in 1783, “Liberty and publick Happiness cannot exist long in any Country; and this necessary Knowledge cannot be obtained in any other way than by a general Circulation of publick Papers.” This point was made more emphatically a few years later by John Fenno in the first issue of the
Gazette of the United States
(New York, April 15, 1789): “The great and momentous subject of Education is hourly appreciating in its importance: That part of the new constitution, which opens the door to every man of rank, possessing virtue and abilities, to the highest honours in the great American Republick, has expanded the views of every American.” Of course, it had long been a commonplace in Anglo-American culture that newspapers in particular (and books in general) were meant to be both “useful and entertaining.” But the American Revolution had changed many of the social ground rules. The idea of equality – opening the door to “every man of rank, possessing virtue and abilities” - gave education a new significance in the United States, unlike “any other country upon the face of the earth.” Fenno went on to say, “The middling and lower class of citizens will therefore find their account in becoming subscribers for this Gazette, should it pay a particular regard to this great subject.” In other words, by paying for a paper devoted to education, subscribers were in effect paying themselves (“their account”). Their money would not be wasted, especially if they could rise “to the highest honours” by reading their newspapers.