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

“Now selling by WILLIAM GREEN, Bookseller, in Maiden Lane, New-York.  COMMON SENSE.”

Just eleven days after the first newspaper advertisement for Thomas Paine’s Common Sense appeared in the January 9, 1776, edition of the Pennsylvania Evening Post, the first advertisement for the inflammatory political pamphlet ran in a newspaper outside of Philadelphia.  Within a week, Robert Bell, the publisher of the first edition, inserted advertisements in all six newspapers printed in Philadelphia, including Henrich Millers Pennsylvanischer Staatsbote.  One of the most savvy and influential American printers and booksellers of the eighteenth century, Bell quickly dispatched copies of the pamphlet to New York.  On January 20, the Constitutional Gazette carried an advertisement that nearly replicated those in Philadelphia’s newspapers.

That notice announced the publication of the pamphlet and stated that it was “now selling by ROBERT BELL, in Third-Street, Philadelphia” for two shillings per copy.  Yet prospective customers did not need to send to Philadelphia to acquire copies because the pamphlet was “now selling by WILLIAM GREEN, Bookseller, in Maiden Lane, New-York.”  Like the other advertisements, the notice in the Constitutional Gazette did not identify Paine as the author.  It gave the title of the work, “COMMON SENSE; ADDRESSED TO THE INHABITANTS OF AMERICA,” and listed the various headings for the sections of the pamphlet.  Readers may have already heard about a new pamphlet that took Philadelphia by storm and some of the arguments for declaring independence that it contained, yet such an outline likely told them more than they already knew and whetted their appetites for more.  What did the pamphlet say about “Monarchy and Hereditary succession”?  What kinds of “Thoughts on the present state of American affairs” did it contain?  What did the author think of “the present Ability of America” in its contest against Great Britain?  Even before they saw anything in print, most residents of New York probably first learned about Common Sense via word of mouth.  The advertisement in the Constitutional Gazette offered readers an opportunity to move beyond excited conversations about what they heard the pamphlet said about monarchy, government, and the prospects for declaring independence to obtaining their own copies and reading the treatise for themselves.  It did not take long for advertisements for Common Sense to move beyond Philadelphia’s newspapers to the Constitutional Gazette in New York and other newspapers in other cities and towns.