What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?
“Those who do not chuse to be disappointed of the first number, are requested to be speedy in subscribing.”
After months of distributing subscription proposals, advertising in newspapers from New Hampshire to Maryland, seeking submissions, and providing updates, Isaiah Thomas finally published the first issue of the Royal American Magazine on February 7, 1774. He ran advertisements to that effect in the Boston-Gazette and the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy on the day the magazine became available to current and prospective subscribers. Three days later, when he published the next edition of his own weekly newspaper, the Massachusetts Spy, Thomas inserted an even more elaborate advertisement. He ran a similar notice, a slightly shorter variation, in the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter on the same day.
Thomas began the version in the Massachusetts Spy with the pronouncement, “This day was published.” Readers understood that meant that printed material, whether book, magazine, pamphlet, or almanac, was available to purchase, not necessarily that it was first printed that very day. After all, newspaper advertisements proclaiming, “This day was published,” usually ran for weeks and sometimes even months without revision. Thomas then reviewed the price, ten shillings and eight pence per year, with just over half, five shillings and eight pence, “to be paid on subscribing,” and promoted the copperplate engravings that “Embellished” the first issue of the magazine. Only after providing that information did Thomas name the publication, “NUMBER I. of THE ROYAL American Magazine, Or UNIVERSAL Repository of Instruction and Amusement, For JANUARY, 1774.” That Thomas published the January edition in early February likely did not seem odd to colonizers. The few magazines published in eighteenth-century America tended to be printed and distributed at the end of the month rather than the beginning.
Thomas devoted about half of the advertisement to a list of contents of the January issue of the Royal American Magazine, including essays on “Liberty in General,” “Thoughts on Matrimony,” and “Advice to the Ladies,” instructions “To die Woollen blue,” “To print on Linen or Cotton,” and “To die tanned Skins of a durable blue,” and several items under the headings “POETICAL ESSAYS” and “HISTORICAL CHRONICLE.” Several authors apparently heeded his earlier calls for submissions, “requesting the Favour of their LUCUBRATIONS, which he promises to convey to the World with the greatest Care and Attention.” Thomas also listed “Governor Hutchinson’s History of Massachusetts-Bay” at the end of the contents. In the subscription proposals for the magazine, he offered Hutchinson’s History as a premium, pledging to include a portion with each issue of the magazine “in such a manner as to be bound up by itself.” Subscribers could opt to have multiple issues of the magazine bound together into a single volume at the same time they had bookbinders collate and bind the pages of Hutchinson’s History.
Thomas concluded with a note to encourage prospective subscribers who had hesitated to submit their names soon or risk missing out. “But a few copies were printed more than were subscribed for,” he declared, so “those who do not chuse to be disappointed of the first number, are requested to be speedy in subscribing.” Customers could purchase the magazine from Thomas and “Printers and Booksellers in AMERICA.” With all the fanfare around the first issue of the magazine, Thomas hoped to entice even more subscribers for his latest venture. An advertising campaign that began months earlier continued with the publication of “NUMBER I” of the Royal American Magazine.
