Poem in Advertisement

April 15

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

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

Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet (April 15, 1776).

“The patient fisher takes his silent stand, / Intent, his angle trembling in his hand.”

Edward Pole was no stranger to advertising.  He experimented with a variety of marketing strategies over the years.  Pole started out operating a “GROCERY STORE” in Philadelphia, but he also sold “FISHING TACKLE Of all sorts, for use of either sea or river.”  His advertisement in the Pennsylvania Chronicle in August 1772 gave nearly as much space to fishing tackle as to groceries.  In May 1774, he began adorning his advertisements in Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet with a woodcut depicting a fish, drawing attention to the portion of his notice that promoted fishing tackle.  In January 1775, Pole delivered the woodcut to the printing office of the Pennsylvania Ledger to accompany his advertisements in that newspaper.  In April 1776, the familiar image appeared in an advertisement in Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet once again.  This time, however, Pole did not mention groceries.  Instead, he devoted his entire advertisement to “FISHING TACKLE” and firearms.  Pole must have found that he could make a living by specializing in sporting goods.  In the 1780s, he distributed ornate trade cards that listed his occupation as “FISHING-TACKLE-MAKER.”

Even though Pole included his woodcut depicting a fish in his advertisement in the April 15, 1776, edition of Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet, it did not appear first.  Visual images usually appeared at the top of newspaper advertisements, but Pole instead chose to open his notice with several lines of poetry from Alexander Pope’s “Windsor-Forest” (1713).

IN genial Spring, beneath the quiv’ring shade,
Where cooling vapours breathe along the mead,
The patient fisher takes his silent stand,
Intent, his angle trembling in his hand;
With looks unmov’d, he hopes the scaly breed,
And eyes the dancing cork and bending reed.
Our plenteous streams a various race suppy:
The bright ey’d PEARCH, with fins of TYRIAN dye;
The silver EEL, in shing volumes roll’d;
The yellow CARP, in scales bedrop’d with gold;
Swift TROUTS, diversify’d with crimson stains,
And PIKE, the tyrants of wat’ry plains.  POPE.

As spring arrived and some consumers contemplated spending leisure time fishing, Pole deployed the poem to invite them to imagine themselves spending time outside, next to a river.  To make the most of that time, they could treat themselves to new fishing equipment, including a “dancing cork” (or bobber) and a “bending reed” (or pole).  Pole was prepared to supply “Gentlemen going on parties in the FISHING way, either to the river, capes, or Black Point,” with “the best kind of FISHING TACKLE suitable for those places.”  Via the lines from “Windsore-Forest,” he prompted them to envision the different fish they might catch or simply the pleasure they would derive from their pastime and the company they would keep, whether their own quiet contemplation or fellowship with other members of their party.  Including the poem increased the length of his advertisement and thus the cost of running of it, but Pole apparently considered it worth the investment to engage prospective customers and make his marketing more memorable.

May 10

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Connecticut Courant (May 10, 1774).

“Come see for love, and then if you please may buy of me.”

In the spring of 1774, Samuel Wescote inserted a lengthy advertisement in the Connecticut Courant.  The shopkeeper informed the public that he had “just received a new and fresh Supply of Goods which are now ready for Sale at his Store … in Hartford.”  To demonstrate the choices that he presented to consumers, he provided an extensive list that included “a very neat and fashionable assortment of dark and light Chintzes and Callicoes,” “Women’s leather worsted & silk, black & colour’d Mitts,” “Men’s worsted black colour’d & mix’d Hose,” “black Umbrelloes,” and “Cutlery and Crockery Ware.”  In addition, he stocked “many other articles too tedious to name.”  Prospective customers would have to visit his shop to discover those other wonders for themselves.

To further entice them, Wescote promised good deals, stating that he set his prices “as cheap as is sold in Hartford.”  That being the case, the price was the price.  Wescote had no intention of haggling, not with new customers nor with loyal customers.  He planned to treat “all my customers alike,” according to the principle he set forth in a rhyming couplet that concluded his advertisement.  “Come see for love, and then if you please may buy of me / But for dispatch have set my Goods so low that no abatement will there be.”  In other words, the shopkeeper saved time for everyone by setting the lowest possible price from the start.  Customers did not need to wonder if they could have gotten an even better bargain if they dickered with Wescote a bit more.  Set in italics to increase its visibility, the couplet encapsulated the consumer experience that Wescote developed throughout his advertisement.  He encouraged browsing, believing that colonizers already immersed in a transatlantic consumer revolution would “see for love” the many kinds of merchandise he carried and select items to purchase that “please[d]” them.  His pricing scheme, offering “Goods so low” to give his customers the best value, streamlined final transactions.  He made shopping rather than paying the focal point of the consumer experience for his customers, the couplet distinguishing his advertisement from others.

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.