Noel and Hazard

July 5

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , , , ,

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

New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (July 5, 1773).

“The WITS of WESTMINSTER.”

The headline alone likely the attention of many readers of the July 5, 1773, edition of the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury.  It invited them to learn more about a book that Hodge and Shober, printers, and Noel and Hazard, booksellers, offered for sale at their shops, likely an American edition of a book published in London in 1772.  In the advertisement immediately above, Samuel Dellap announced that he stocked copies of The Wits of Westminster “just published.”  Dellap had recently published and advertised an American edition of George Alexander Stevens’s popular Lecture on Heads.  In the second advertisement, the main title of the book served as the headline, while, in both advertisements, the extended secondary title doubled as copy.  When the advertisers described the contents as “A New select Collection of Jests, Bon Mots, humorous Tales, brilliant Repartees, Epigrams, and other Sallies of Wit and Humour, chiefly new and original, being and agreeable and lively Companion for the Parlour, or wherever such a Companion is most necessary and pleasing” they merely copied what appeared on the title page, as many printers, publishers, and booksellers did during the period.

The lengthy secondary title provided additional advertising copy, declaring that The Wits of Westminster contained “more Novelty, than has appeared since the Time of Joe Miller’s Publication.”  According to the British Museum, Joe Miller (1634-1738) was a comic actor whose “reputation as a comedian off-stage was enhanced by the posthumous publication of ‘Joe Miller’s Jests’ in 1739.”  That first edition included 247 numbered jokes.  Subsequent editions included even more.  Miller and, especially, the witticisms collected in the books that bore his name gained so much notoriety that often-repeated jokes became known as “Millerisms.”  A little more than a century after Miller’s death and the publication of Jests, Charles Dickens made reference to the comedian in A Christmas Carol (1843).  Framing The Wits of Westminster as the most entertaining collection of jokes since Jests, published more than thirty years earlier, likely resonated with prospective buyers who would have understood the cultural reference.

In case that was not enough to incite interest, Hodge and Sober and Noel and Hazard added a short poem, a meditation on humor, that distinguished their advertisement from others.  “Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee, / Jest and youthful Jollity; / Sport that wrinkled Care derides. / And Laughter, holding both his Sides. / True Wit is like the brilliant Stone, / Dug from the Indian Mine; / Which boasts two various Powers in one, / To cut as well as shine.”  Humor, the poem observed, had the potential both to amuse and to wound, depending on how deployed.  Many of the “Bon Mots,” “brilliant Repartees,” and “Sallies of Wit” in The Wits of Westminster likely did both at once, the humor sometimes depending on belittling the subject of the jest.  While intended primarily for amusement, the book, like the poem in the advertisement, required readers to think about what made something funny.  Even frivolity required contemplation, the advertisers asserted in their efforts to convince prospective buyers to indulge themselves by purchasing The Wits of Westminster.

June 10

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (June 10, 1771).

“We shall refer for particulars to our general catalogue now printing.”

Booksellers, like other purveyors of consumer goods, often listed their merchandise in their advertisements.  James Rivington, for instance, inserted a notice that named dozens of titles in the June 10, 1771, edition of the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury.  On the same day, an advertisement for a “New-Book & Stationer’s Store” in Boston filled an entire column and overflowed into another in the Boston-Gazette, most of the space devoted to naming more than 150 books.

The partnership of Noel and Hazard, on the other hand, took a different approach in their advertisement in the New-York Gazette.  In a short paragraph, they listed sixteen books “just come to hand,” but also reported that they recently imported many other titles from London and Bristol.  The booksellers opined that “the news-paper can’t afford room but for a few articles,” so rather than publishing a longer list like Rivington and the proprietor of the “New-Book & Stationer’s Store,” a list that would have been incomplete, they directed readers to “our general catalogue now printing” in order to learn more “particulars” about their inventory.  Interested parties presumably visited Noel and Hazard’s shop to acquire copies of the catalog.

The booksellers may have also distributed copies to retailers who had done business with them in the past.  They stated that they had “a large supply of books and stationary, suitable for country stores” and noted that they sold their wares “wholesale and retail.”  Some eighteenth-century printers sent catalogs to associates with the intention that they would use them as order forms.  The recipients marked the number of copies next to each title before returning them, a more efficient method than copying titles into a letter.

Noel and Hazard used one form of marketing, a newspaper advertisement, to promote another form of marketing, a book catalog.  Other newspaper advertisements that listed scores of titles amounted to book catalogs embedded in newspapers, but Noel and Hazard instead opted to produce an item that circulated separately.  The frequency that booksellers mentioned catalogs in their newspaper advertisements suggests that retailers and consumers had access to many more than survive today.

May 13

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , ,

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

New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (May 13, 1771).

“Preparing catalogues … to be distributed gratis to their customers.”

In the spring of 1771, booksellers Noel and Hazard took to the pages of the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury to advertise the “general assortment of books, and stationary ware” available at their shop.  They sought customers of all sorts, offering their inventory both “wholesale and retail.”  The partners made recommendations for the proprietors of country stores, including “bibles, testaments, psalters, primers, childs new play thing, [and] young man’s companion.”  They also had on hand a “great variety of Newbury’s pretty little gilt picture books for young masters and misses,” encouraging adults to purchase books for children.  For prospective customers who pursued certain occupations, Noel and Hazard stocked “navigation books and instruments, surveying books and instruments, [and] architect books and instruments.”  For all sorts of other readers, they sold English and French dictionaries, a “variety of the best pieces on husbandry, gardening and farriery,” and works by Milton, Pope, Shakespeare, and a variety of other authors familiar to eighteenth-century readers.

Noel and Hazard imported their merchandise from London and Scotland.  They anticipated expanding their inventory upon the arrival of “the next vessels from London, Bristol, and Scotland.”  At that time, the items available at their shop would become “so very numerous” that a newspaper advertisement would not longer suffice.  As an alternative, Noel and Hazard were “preparing catalogues of the whole to be distributed gratis to their customers.”  Booksellers regularly produced and disseminated catalogs to supplement their newspaper advertisements.  Those catalogues took various forms, sometimes appearing as broadsides and other times as pamphlets.  Over time, they became more sophisticated in terms of organization.  Rather than listing available titles according to the size of the volumes, booksellers instead grouped them together according to genre.  Doing so assisted prospective customers in locating titles of interest and discovering items they were most likely to purchase but might not have otherwise considered.  Promising free catalogs also served as a ploy to get consumers into shops.  Noel and Hazard described an extensive inventory in their advertisement, but readers who visited their shop to acquire a complete catalog had an opportunity to browse and examine the merchandise for themselves.

Few eighteenth-century book catalogs survive relative to how often booksellers mentioned them in newspaper advertisements.  That has prompted some historians to suspect that many never actually made it into print.  After all, Noel and Hazard stated that they “are preparing catalogues,” not that the catalogs were ready for distribution.  The mere promise of a catalog may have also drawn prospective customers into shops.  Still, booksellers promoted catalogs so frequently that it seems likely that they did distribute many of them, at least in sufficient numbers for prospective customers to have reasonable expectations of acquiring catalogs described in newspaper advertisements.