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

“The Royal American Magazine … For JANUARY, 1775.”

When Joseph Greenleaf acquired the Royal American Magazine from Isaiah Thomas, the original printer, near the end of the summer of 1774, the magazine had fallen two months behind, largely due to the hardships caused by the Boston Port Act.  Over the next several months, Greenleaf worked diligently to return the magazine to its publication schedule, achieving that goal with publication of the December 1774 issue during the first week of January 1775.  While that may seem late by twenty-first century standards, magazines bore the date of the previous month, not the upcoming month, in the eighteenth century.  Subscribers anticipated receiving that month’s issue at the very end of the month or the beginning of the next month.

Although Greenleaf managed to get the magazine back on schedule at the beginning of the new year, that did not last long.  The January issue, anticipated around the first of February, was not available until nearly the end of the month.  On February 20, a notice in the Boston Evening-Post announced, “THIS DAY PUBLISHED … The Royal American Magazine … For JANUARY, 1775.”  It was the first advertisement that mentioned the magazine in February, except for the final appearance of Henry Christian Geyer’s notice that critiqued the Royal American Magazine because it “was not printed with his Ink” that he “manufactured” in Boston.  Greenleaf’s progress may have been stalled, in part, by producing a supplement to the first volume of the magazine during January.  That supplement included a title page for the entire volume to insert if subscribers had all the issue bound together, an address to subscribers, and an index.  It also delivered an installment of Thomas Hutchinson’s History of Massachusetts-Bay, a premium offered to subscribers when Thomas circulated subscription proposals.

Greenleaf published only two advertisements for the Royal American Magazine in February 1775.  His notice that first appeared in the Boston Evening-Post on February 20 ran three days later in the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter.  As had been the case in January, it seems that the printing offices shared type that had been set in one location and transferred to the other.

The January 1775 issue turned out to be one of the last issues of the Royal American Magazine, despite the plans for improvement that Greenleaf sketched in the address to subscribers in the supplement.  The printer could not contend with the circumstances in Boston as the political situation worsened.  Although Greenleaf and the subscribers did not know it at the time, the first battles of the Revolutionary War would take place within a couple of months.  In their wake, some newspapers printed in Boston suspended publication and others ceased publication.  The Royal American Magazine was not the only periodical that became a casualty of the imperial crisis.

This entry continues an ongoing series in which the Adverts 250 Project has tracked advertisements for the Royal American Magazine from Thomas’s first notice, in May 1773, that he planned to distribute subscription proposals to newspapers advertisements in June, July, August, September, October, November, and December 1773 and January, February, March, April, May, and June 1774.  No magazine appeared in July 1774 because of the “Distresses,” yet they resumed in August, September, October, November, and December 1774 and January 1775.

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“Royal American Magazine, was not printed with his Ink”

• February 6 – Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy (third appearance)

“THIS DAY PUBLISHED … NUMBER I. VOL. II. … For JANUARY, 1775”

• February 20 – Boston Evening-Post (first appearance)
• February 23 – Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter (first appearance)