What was advertised in a colonial American magazine 250 years ago this month?

“A concise, but just, representation of the hardships and sufferings of the town of BOSTON.”

An advertisement in the September 15, 1774, edition of the Massachusetts Spy informed readers that “NUMBER VII of the ROYAL AMERICAN MAGAZINE” was “This day published” and “will be ready to be delivered, to-morrow, to the subscribers.”  The notice referred to the July edition.  Isaiah Thomas, the original publisher, had always been behind in circulating new issues of the magazine, putting Joseph Greenleaf, the new proprietor, in a position to catch up.  The July issue was his first, published just three weeks after the first announcement that he now oversaw the magazine.

Like other eighteenth-century magazines, the Royal American Magazine did not feature advertisements interspersed among its contents, yet that did not mean that it lacked advertising altogether.  First Thomas and then Greenleaf distributed each issue enclosed in blue paper wrappers that featured advertisements.  In the last quarter of the century, other magazine publishers did the same.  The wrappers protected each issue until subscribers had six of them bound into a volume, though bookbinders usually removed the wrappers and other advertising ephemera, such as trade cards, subscription proposals, and book catalogs, within them.  Bound volumes preserved in research libraries give the impression that advertising was not part of eighteenth-century magazines, yet intact individual issues demonstrate that was not the case at all.

Over time, the kinds of advertisements on the wrappers evolved to include an array of goods and services, but in the 1770s they almost exclusively came from the book trades and, especially, the publisher of the magazine.  Such was the case with the Royal American Magazine.  The wrappers for the July 1774 issue had a message to the subscribers from Thomas, the same one that announced the change of publisher in the Massachusetts Spy, an advertisement for “A LETTER to a FRIEND: GIVING a concise, but just, representation of the hardships of the town of BOSTON” sold at Greenleaf’s printing office, and a list of books and printed blanks also available from the publisher of the magazine.  The wrappers for the June 1774 edition had included advertisers not affiliated with the magazine, yet still members of the book trades.  Benjamin Edes and John Gill, printers of the Boston-Gazette, advertised “OBSERVATIONS on the ACT of PARLIAMENT, commonly called the BOSTON PORT BILL,” the legislation that resulted in the “hardships of the town” outlined in the pamphlet Greenleaf promoted.  Nathaniel Mills and John Hicks, printers of the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy, advertised an array of books they stocked, while Bernard Romans outlined his “PROPOSALS For printing by Subscription, A CONCISE Natural HISTORY of EAST and WEST FLORIDA.”

The Adverts 250 Project has tracked newspaper advertisements concerning the Royal American Gazette from Thomas’s first mention of his intention to circulate subscription proposals through the publication of the first six issues and transferring the magazine to a new publisher.  That story, however, has not examined the Royal American Magazine as a delivery mechanism for advertising.  Subsequent entries will take a closer look at the advertisements that appeared on the magazine’s wrappers throughout its run.