What was advertised in a revolutionary American newspaper 250 years ago today?
“By the hundred[,] dozen or single, with good allowance to those who take a quantity. COMMON SENSE.”
One year after the battles at Lexington and Concord that started the Revolutionary War, the first advertisement for Thomas Paine’s Common Sense appeared in the Essex Journal and New-Hampshire Packet. John Mycall, the printer of that newspaper, prepared a local edition in Newburyport, Massachusetts, just as printers in many other cities and towns in Pennsylvania, New York, and New England had done in the three months since Robert Bell made the first edition available in Philadelphia.
This newest edition was not yet ready for sale. Instead, Mycall announced that it was “Now in the press, and will be published in about a fortnight.” He encouraged readers to anticipate its publication, priming the pump for distributing the popular political pamphlet within the next couple of weeks. His advertisement replicated many that appeared in other newspapers. He gave the title of the pamphlet, provided an overview of its contents by listing the subject headings, and gave two lines from the poem “Liberty” by Scottish poet James Thompson. He also described his edition as “A NEW EDITION, with several Additions in the Body of the Work To which is added an APPENDIX; together with an Address to the People called QUAKERS.” That suggested that Mycall drew the Newburyport edition from one of the expanded editions that Paine collaborated with William Bradford and Thomas Bradford in publishing in Philadelphia after the author parted ways with Bell, though the printer of the first edition pirated that bonus content when he published unauthorized subsequent editions. A nota bene in Mycall’s advertisement, “The new Addition here given increases the Work upwards of one Third,” echoed the Bradfords’ advertisements.
To increase sales and disseminate the pamphlet widely, Mycall enlisted a local agent in Andover, and both of them sold copies “by the hundred[,] dozen or single, with good allowance to those who take a quantity.” In other words, he gave a discount to customers who bought multiple copies. Those who purchased a dozen may have distributed them to friends, while those who purchased “by the hundred” likely planned to sell them retail in their own shops. The discount for volume allowed them to set competitive prices while turning a profit. In addition, Mycall proclaimed that “the price will be as low as it can Possibly be Afforded, in Order to put so valuable a Piece into the Hands of the Poor, as well as the Rich.” Such efforts likely helped Common Sense become the most widely read political pamphlet published in the colonies during the era of the American Revolution.