What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago this week?

“Any number may be had separate to complete sets, or the whole done up in the usual magazine form.”

James Rivington, the printer of Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer, cultivated alternate revenue streams at his printing office.  Many printers were also booksellers, peddling books they imported from England.  Such was the case with Rivington.  He devoted a portion of his advertisement in the April 21, 1774, edition of his newspaper to “NEW BOOKS,” listing several that he had on hand.  He also promoted other items from among the “fresh Parcel of Goods” he recently received.  Like many other printers, he sold “cakes for making ink” and popular patent medicines, yet he also stocked a more elaborate inventory of other kinds of goods, including “Shaving boxes fitted with soap and brushes,” “CASES of METHEMATICAL INSTRUMENTS,” and “WESTON’s Snuff, fresh and very excellent.”

The printer and bookseller also advised prospective customers that “This Day are come to hand the Magazines and Reviews.”  In particular, he hawked “THE WESTMINSTER MAGAZINE,” proclaiming that he had copies “For every month of the last year.”  An associate on the other side of the Atlantic had assembled the annual run of the magazine and shipped it to Rivington to peddle to colonizers interested in a review of “the history, politicks, literature, manners,” and other cultural touchstones “of the year 1773.”  To further entice readers, the magazine was “adorned with a variety of well executed copperplates” that buyers could leave intact or remove to frame and display in homes, shops, or offices.  For those who had already purchased some editions but not others, Rivington allowed that “Amy of the numbers may be had separate to complete sets.”  He also offered “the whole done up in the usual magazine form, and lettered on the back.”  In other words, a bookbinder would compile all the issues of the Westminster Magazine from 1773 into a single bound volume and label the spine.  That transformed the separate issues from ephemera into an attractive collection that would enhance any library.

Rivington advertised the Westminster Magazine at the same time that Isaiah Thomas continued marketing the Royal American Magazine, the publication that he launched earlier in the year.  The Royal American Magazine was the only magazine published in the colonies at the time.  Only about a dozen American magazines had been published before that, most of them folding in less than a year and none of them lasting longer than three years.  Instead of American magazines, colonizers usually bought imported magazines from booksellers or received them from correspondents.  Rivington’s method of importing, advertising, and disseminating the Westminster Magazine and other magazines was familiar and standard practice, making the Royal American Magazine the novelty in the American marketplace.