What was advertised in a revolutionary American newspaper 250 years ago today?
“Lately published … THE Manual Exercise.”
As fall arrived in 1776, John Trumbull inserted an advertisement for “THE Manual Exercise, As ordered by his Majesty in 1764, and now adopted in the various Provinces of North-America” in his newspaper, the Norwich Packet. He described the military manual as “Lately published, and to be sold by the Printer hereof.” Eighteenth-century readers understood that “Lately published” did not mean that it just came off the press. Instead, it meant that the book had been published and was available rather than being in the proposal or preparation stage. After all, advertisements proposing to publish many books ran in early American newspapers, but not all of them garnered enough demand that printers moved beyond merely gauging interest in them.
Local editions of this military manual, The Manual Exercise as Ordered by His Majesty in 1764: Together with Plans and Explanations of the Method Generally Practised at Reviews and Field-Days, had been published in at least ten towns from Massachusetts to Virginia in 1774 and 1775. It did so well that some printers issued second editions. Such had been the case with John Trumbull and his former partners, Alexander Robertson and James Roberston. They published their first Norwich edition in 1774 and a second Norwich edition in 1775. When Trumbull advertised the book in the fall of 1776, he did not promote a new edition but instead sought to sell remaining copies of the 1775 that he published with his former partners, Loyalists who had since moved to New York. His latest advertisement indicated that the manual included “General WOLFE’s Instructions to young OFFICERS.” The Robertsons and Trumbull previously added that content to the second Norwich edition, further evidence that Trumbull now hawked that book rather than a new edition. In asserting that it was “Lately published,” the printer did not claim that the military manual just hit the market but rather that production was complete and copies were available for sale immediately.