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

“Just PUBLISHED … THE IMPENETRABLE SECRET … to be SOLD by STORY and HUMPHREYS.”

The June 23, 1775, edition of Story and Humphreys’s Pennsylvania Mercury included the first advertisement for a new edition of The Impenetrable Secret, a book or pamphlet “Just PUBLISHED and PRINTED with TYPES, PAPER, and INK, MANUFACTURED in this PROVINCE.”  The advertisement suggested that Enoch Story and Daniel Humphreys, the printers of the newspaper, also published The Impenetrable Secret, though that may not have been the case.  Printers often included the phrase “just published and sold by” in advertisements, but they expected readers to separate “just published” from “sold by.”  In other words, printers sometimes acted as booksellers who sold books and pamphlets “just published” by other printers.  Story and Humphreys could have printed The Impenetrable Secret, though Isaiah Thomas declared in his History of Printing in America (1810) that “[t]heir chief employment was a newspaper, which they published but a few months when their printing house and materials were burnt, and their partnership was in consequence dissolved.”[1]

Still, no other newspaper carried advertisements for The Impenetrable Secret, suggesting that Story and Humphreys were indeed the publishers and advertised a product from their own press in their newspaper.  They also advertised “Blank Bonds” and “Bills of Exchange” that they presumably printed.  Whether a book or pamphlet, The Impenetrable Secret may have been one of the few projects that they pursued beyond their newspaper during their brief partnership.  No copy of the work survives, making it impossible to examine the imprint.  In American Bibliography, Charles Evans lists The Impenetrable Secret and assigns it an imprint that resembles the advertisement: “Philadelphia: Printed and sold by Story and Humphreys, 1775.”  He indicates that the entry in American Bibliography originated with the advertisement.  He also notes that The Impenetrable Secret was “First printed by B. Franklin and D. Hall, in 1749.”[2]  Unfortunately, there are no extant copies of that edition either.  The entry in American Bibliography merely states, “Philadelphia: Printed by B. Franklin, and D. Hall. 1749.”[3]  That entry likely came from an advertisement that first appeared in the margin at the bottom of the third page of the May 18, 1749, edition of the Pennsylvania Gazette: “Just published, and to be sold at the Post-Office, The IMPENETRABLE SECRET.”  That advertisement ran many times over the next several months before The Impenetrable Secret eventually appeared in the January 16, 1750, issue at the end of a lengthy advertisement that described the contents of several books for sale at the printing office.  Each of those items was numbered, with the list followed by a note that “likewise may be had, The Impenetrable Secret, with the Key.”  Was it some sort of puzzle or riddle?  Franklin and Hall and, later, Story and Humphreys expected that prospective customers already knew the answer and did not give an explanation.  For now, the contents of The Impenetrable Secret remain an impenetrable secret, but perhaps a lost and forgotten copy of either Franklin and Hall’s edition or Story and Humphrey’s edition might someday be found.

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[1] Isaiah Thomas, The History of Printing in America: With a Biography of Printers and an Account of Newspapers (1810; New York: Weathervane Books, 1970), 402.

[2] See entry 14126 in Charles Evans, American Bibliography: A Chronological Dictionary of All, Books, Pamphlets, and Periodical Publications Printed in the United States of America From the Genesis of Printing in 1639 Down to and Including the Year 1820 with Bibliographical and Biographical Notes.

[3] See entry 6334 in Evans, American Bibliography.