Francis Bailey

February 28

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Pennsylvania Gazette (February 28, 1776).

“Lancaster … JUST PUBLISHED … by FRANCIS BAILEY … COMMON SENSE.”

Readers encountered advertisements for Thomas Paine’s Common Sense on the first and final pages of the February 28, 1776, edition of the Pennsylvania Gazette.  Two of those advertisements looked familiar to anyone who had been perusing the public prints in recent weeks.  One of them promoted the “NEW EDITION OF COMMON SENSE: With Additions and Improvements in the Body of the Work.”  Paine penned that material as well as “an APPENDIX, and an ADDRESS to the People called QUAKERS” for an edition that he worked with William Bradford and Thomas Bradford to publish.  The Bradfords and other members of the book trades in Philadelphia stocked and sold Paine’s approved edition.  Meanwhile, Robert Bell, the publisher of the first edition, continued hawking “Large Additions to COMMON SENSE,” a collection of essays drawn from newspapers, none of them by Paine, to accompany his unauthorized second edition of Common Sense.  The compositor conveniently placed the advertisements one after the other on the final page, seemingly not taking a side in the dispute.

Another advertisement for Common Sense appeared on the first page of that issue of the Pennsylvania Gazette.  It announced the publication of a local edition published by Francis Bailey in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.  It was the first time that an advertisement for Bailey’s edition appeared in any newspaper.  Bearing the dateline, “Lancaster, February 24, 1776,” it informed readers that Bailey sold “COMMON SENSE; Addressed to the INHABITANTS of AMERICA.  With the Additions, APPENDIX, and Address to the People called QUAKERS” at his “Printing and Post-Offices, in King-street.”  Although other publishers of Common Sense provided a preview by listing the pamphlet’s section headings the first time they ran advertisements, Bailey did not do so.  Perhaps he did not consider it necessary considering that the Pennsylvania Gazette and other newspapers printed in Philadelphia that already carried advertisements for the various editions by Bell and the Bradfords circulated in Lancaster and served that town as local and regional newspapers.  Lancaster would not have its own newspaper until John Dunlap temporarily relocated his Pennsylvania Packet during the British occupation of Philadelphia in 1777.  Bailey’s advertisement and his edition of Common Sense were for residents of Lancaster and nearby towns, not readers in Philadelphia who had ready access to other editions, but since they shared local-regional newspapers that already carried many advertisements that included the contents of the pamphlet Bailey did not need to incorporate that information into his own advertisement.  He saved money on advertising by publishing a streamlined notice.

September 21

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Pennsylvania Gazette (September 21, 1774).

“THE LANCASTER ALMANACK, for the year 1775.”

It was a sign of the changing seasons.  As the summer of 1774 came to a close, the first advertisements for almanacs for 1775 began to appear in newspapers, part of an annual ritual.  Each year printers deployed advertisements in weekly periodicals to hawk their annual periodicals.  Francis Bailey, a printer in Lancaster, was among the first to do so in 1774, placing notices in the Pennsylvania Gazette and the Pennsylvania Journal on September 21.  Readers still had more than three months to acquire their almanacs before the new year, yet each year many printers saw opportunities to increase sales and beat their competitors by making the useful and entertaining pamphlets available in the late summer and early fall.  That also allowed plenty of time for shopkeepers to purchase in volume, often receiving a discount, to stock and sell to their own customers.

For his part, Bailey relied on the contents of the “LANCASTER ALMANACK, for the year 1775” in generating the copy for his advertisement, adopting a common practice among printers of almanacs.  It was his first endeavor in printing and marketing an almanac, having opened a printing office Lancaster in 1771 and initially focusing on job printing.  Bailey realized that printing an almanac of his own could be a lucrative venture, supplementing the other sources of revenue in his printing office.  Some of the contents he could compile on his own, such as the essays and poetry, but he needed a mathematician or astronomer to supply the astronomical calculations, including “the motions of the sun and moon; the true places and aspects of the planets; the rising and setting of the sun; [and] the rising, setting and southing of the moon.”  The title page listed Anthony Sharp as the author of those astronomical calculations, though, as was the case with many other almanacs, the author was a pseudonym.  According to the entry in the American Antiquarian Society’s catalog, Anthony Sharp was “a pseudonym found only in the almanacs published by Bailey.”  Furthermore, the “calculations throughout duplicate those in Father Abraham’s almanack for 1775 (Philadelphia) whose title page states that it is [David] Rittenhouse’s work.”

Each year colonizers in and near Lancaster had ready access to various almanacs published by the several printers in Philadelphia, yet Bailey recognized his chance to give them an option for a local edition.  He established a relationship with a noted astronomer to provide the tables, then advertised his Lancaster Almanack before the Philadelphia editions went to press.  The success of his venture depended in part on making his new almanac available to local customers before they had an option to purchase any of the alternatives that would come off the presses in Philadelphia.