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

“A few Copies of a Pamphlet ENTITLED, Common Sense.”

As February 1776 came to a close, more printers and booksellers made copies of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense available to local readers.  Two advertisements for the popular political pamphlet appeared in the February 26 edition of the Norwich Packet.  In one, the very first advertisement that appeared in that issue, Alexander Robertson, James Robertson, and John Trumbull announced that “A few Copies of a Pamphlet ENTITLED, Common Sense; ADDRESSED TO THE INHABITANTS OF NORTH AMERICA, May be had of the Printers hereof.”  They did not provide any other details.  In contract, Nathaniel Patten, a bookbinder and stationer, inserted a notice that resembled many others that appeared in newspapers in other towns, including the advertisements for the first edition published by Robert Bell in Philadelphia.  It gave the title, previewed the contents with a list of the section headings, and concluded with an epigraph from “Liberty,” a poem by James Thomson.

Which editions of Common Sense did the printers and Patten sell?  Three days earlier, Timothy Green, the printer of the Connecticut Gazette in New London, announced the imminent publication of a local edition jointly undertaken with Judah P. Spooner in Norwich.  Curiously, Spooner did not place his own advertisement in the Norwich Packet.  The “few Copies” that the Robertsons and Trumbull stocked may have been sent to them by the industrious Bell who had previously supplied William Green, a bookbinder in New York, with copies of the first edition and an unauthorized second edition.  The printers could have also received copies of a New York edition published by John Anderson, the printer of the Constitutional Gazette, or a Providence edition, published by John Carter, the printer of the Providence Gazette, that went to press even more recently.  By the time the Robertsons and Trumbull ran their advertisement, the paths of circulation for the various editions crisscrossed each other.  Similarly, Patten could have sold any of those editions.  His advertisement declared, “Just published and sold by Nathaneil Patten,” yet eighteenth-century readers knew to separate the phrases “Just published” and “sold by.”  The latter referred to Patten, but not necessarily the former. Instead, “Just published” meant “Now available.”  Patten very well have promoted the local edition produced by Spooner.  According to Richard Gimbel, Spooner and Green produced the only editions of Common Sense published in Norwich in 1776.[1]  Whatever the origins of the copies advertised in the Norwich Packet, the printers and Patten participated in the widespread dissemination of the most influential political pamphlet published during the era of the American Revolution.

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[1] Richard Gimbel, Thomas Paine: A Bibliographical Check List of Common Sense with an Account of Its Publication (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1956), 90.