Printers Sharing Type

March 26

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

“The Royal American MAGAZINE … for February 1775.”

In March 1775, three of Boston’s newspapers carried advertisements that the February issue of the Royal American Magazine was now available “at Greenleaf’s Printing Office in Union-Street near the Market” in Boston.  The advertisements first appeared in the Boston Evening-Post and the Boston-Gazette on March 13.  Based on publication dates for magazines today, the February issue seems quite overdue, but in the eighteenth century published distributed magazines at the end of the month or early in the following month.  Considering that Greenleaf had not advertised the January edition until February 20, it appears that he managed to take the next issue to press in just three weeks.

Above: Boston Evening-Post (March 13, 1775); Below: Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter (March 17, 1775).

The advertisement in the Boston-Gazette ran for two consecutive weeks.  The more elaborate version in the Boston Evening-Post reported that the February issue was “Embellished with an elegant Engraving of a History Piece.”  That copperplate engraving, executed by Paul Revere, depicted a scene from the “History of Lauretta,” a moral tale included among the contents of the magazine.  The advertisement ran only once in the Boston Evening-Post, but appeared in the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter on March 17 and 30.  Once again, those printing offices seem to have shared type set in one printing office and transferred to the other.  It is not clear what role Greenleaf played in that arrangement since some of the city’s printers engaged in that practice on other occasions.

What is clear is that Greenleaf’s marketing campaign was not nearly as extensive as the one devised by Isaiah Thomas when he first proposed publishing the Royal American Magazine and announced distribution of the first several issues.  Yet the number of advertisements and the array of newspapers that carried them diminished even during Thomas’s tenure as publisher of the magazine, likely due to the evolving political situation in Boston and throughout the colonies.  He had promoted the magazine widely in the months before colonizers dumped tea into Boston Harbor, but only began publishing it as they contended with the aftermath, including the closure of the port and other punitive measures passed by Parliament in the Coercive Acts.  Even as Thomas filled the magazine with patriot propaganda, he and other residents of Boston experienced “Distresses” that apparently made marketing the Royal American Magazineless of a priority.  For his part, Greenleaf advised the public about new issues, but he did not attempt to replicate the initial marketing strategy devised by Thomas.

This entry continues an ongoing series in which the Adverts 250 Project has tracked advertisements for the Royal American Magazine from Thomas’s first notice, in May 1773, that he planned to distribute subscription proposals to newspapers advertisements in June, July, August, September, October, November, and December 1773 and January, February, March, April, May, and June 1774.  No magazine advertisements for the magazine appeared in July 1774 because of the “Distresses,” yet they resumed in August, September, October, November, and December 1774 and January and February 1775.

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“This Day PUBLISHED, The Royal American MAGAZINE … for February 1775.”

  • March 13 – Boston-Gazette (first appearance)
  • March 20 – Boston-Gazette (second appearance)

“THIS DAY PUBLISHED … The Royal American Magazine … For FEBRUARY 1775.”

  • March 13 – Boston Evening-Post (first appearance)
  • March 17 – Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter (first appearance)
  • March 30 – Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter (second appearance)

February 26

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter (February 26, 1775).

“The Royal American Magazine … For JANUARY, 1775.”

When Joseph Greenleaf acquired the Royal American Magazine from Isaiah Thomas, the original printer, near the end of the summer of 1774, the magazine had fallen two months behind, largely due to the hardships caused by the Boston Port Act.  Over the next several months, Greenleaf worked diligently to return the magazine to its publication schedule, achieving that goal with publication of the December 1774 issue during the first week of January 1775.  While that may seem late by twenty-first century standards, magazines bore the date of the previous month, not the upcoming month, in the eighteenth century.  Subscribers anticipated receiving that month’s issue at the very end of the month or the beginning of the next month.

Although Greenleaf managed to get the magazine back on schedule at the beginning of the new year, that did not last long.  The January issue, anticipated around the first of February, was not available until nearly the end of the month.  On February 20, a notice in the Boston Evening-Post announced, “THIS DAY PUBLISHED … The Royal American Magazine … For JANUARY, 1775.”  It was the first advertisement that mentioned the magazine in February, except for the final appearance of Henry Christian Geyer’s notice that critiqued the Royal American Magazine because it “was not printed with his Ink” that he “manufactured” in Boston.  Greenleaf’s progress may have been stalled, in part, by producing a supplement to the first volume of the magazine during January.  That supplement included a title page for the entire volume to insert if subscribers had all the issue bound together, an address to subscribers, and an index.  It also delivered an installment of Thomas Hutchinson’s History of Massachusetts-Bay, a premium offered to subscribers when Thomas circulated subscription proposals.

Boston Evening-Post (February 20, 1775).

Greenleaf published only two advertisements for the Royal American Magazine in February 1775.  His notice that first appeared in the Boston Evening-Post on February 20 ran three days later in the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter.  As had been the case in January, it seems that the printing offices shared type that had been set in one location and transferred to the other.

The January 1775 issue turned out to be one of the last issues of the Royal American Magazine, despite the plans for improvement that Greenleaf sketched in the address to subscribers in the supplement.  The printer could not contend with the circumstances in Boston as the political situation worsened.  Although Greenleaf and the subscribers did not know it at the time, the first battles of the Revolutionary War would take place within a couple of months.  In their wake, some newspapers printed in Boston suspended publication and others ceased publication.  The Royal American Magazine was not the only periodical that became a casualty of the imperial crisis.

This entry continues an ongoing series in which the Adverts 250 Project has tracked advertisements for the Royal American Magazine from Thomas’s first notice, in May 1773, that he planned to distribute subscription proposals to newspapers advertisements in June, July, August, September, October, November, and December 1773 and January, February, March, April, May, and June 1774.  No magazine appeared in July 1774 because of the “Distresses,” yet they resumed in August, September, October, November, and December 1774 and January 1775.

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“Royal American Magazine, was not printed with his Ink”

  • February 6 – Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy (third appearance)

“THIS DAY PUBLISHED … NUMBER I. VOL. II. … For JANUARY, 1775”

  • February 20 – Boston Evening-Post (first appearance)
  • February 23 – Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter (first appearance)

January 30

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy (January 30, 1775).

“The Royal American Magazine, was not printed with his Ink.”

The final mention of the Royal American Magazine in newspaper advertisements published in January 1775 may not have been the kind of coverage that Joseph Greenleaf, the printer, desired.  Henry Christian Geyer once again inserted his notice for printing ink that he made and sold “at his Shop near Liberty-Tree” in Boston in the January 30 edition of the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy.  In it, he noted to the public that “the Royal American Magazine, was not printed with his Ink.”

Beyond that squabble, Greenleaf did advertise the Royal American Magazine on eight occasions in three of the five newspapers printed in Boston that January.  On January 5, he ran notices in both the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter and the Massachusetts Spy.  In the former, he announced that he “JUST PUBLISHED … NUMBER XII. of The Royal American Magazine … For DECEMBER, 1774.”  To entice curiosity, he noted that issue was “Embellished with elegant Engravings.”  He also stated that he continued to accept subscriptions at his printing office.  That advertisement ran in three consecutive issues.  As was his custom, he ran a shorter advertisement in the Massachusetts Spy.  Extending only three lines, it advised, “This day was published, by J. GREENLEAF, THE Royal American Magazine, or Universal Repository, No. XII. for DECEMBER, 1774.”  That advertisement in the Massachusetts Spy ran only twice.  Another version appeared in the January 16 edition of the Boston Evening-Post, much closer in format to the one in the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter except but without the call for new subscriptions.

That Greenleaf disseminated the December edition of the magazine in early January was a feat.  In the eighteenth century, monthly magazines came out at the end of the month that bore their date or early in the next month, unlike modern magazines released in advance of the dates on their covers.  When Greenleaf acquired the Royal American Magazine from Isaiah Thomas in August 1774, publication had fallen behind by two months because of the “Distresses of the Town of Boston, by the shutting up of our Port.”  Over the next several months, Greenleaf steadily caught up on the overdue issues, delivering the December issue to subscribers right on time at the beginning of January.

On January 23, Greenleaf inserted a new advertisement in the Boston Evening-Post, this time alerting readers that he published “A SUPPLEMENT to The Royal American Magazine … With the Title-Page and Index to Vol. I. for 1774.”  That supplement consisted of a two-page address to the subscribers, a seven-page index, and the next twenty-four pages of Thomas Hutchinson’s History of the Province of Massachusetts-Bay, a monthly feature and premium for subscribers.  In the address, Greenleaf explained that since the magazine had been “suspended near two months by the original undertaker, I have been obliged to publish one oftner than once in three weeks.”  Furthermore, he considered it “necessary to apologize for the poor appearance of the work the last six months.”  He did not have type “so good as I could wish” and could not acquire more because of the “non-importation agreement, which it was MY DUTY to comply with.”  Fortunately, a friend assisted him in obtaining “almost new” type for continuing to publish the magazine.  He also acknowledged that the ink “has been poor, but as it was of AMERICAN MANUFACTURE my customers were not only willing but desirous I should use it.”  When Geyer published advertisements that mentioned Greenleaf did not use his ink in printing the Royal American Magazine, it may have been just as much an attempt to distance his product from the “poor” appearance of the magazine as it was an effort to shame Greenleaf into purchasing from him in the future.  The index concluded with “DIRECTIONS to the BOOK-BINDER for placing the PLATES, &c. in the ROYAL AMERICAN MAGAZINE, for 1774.”  Bookbinders usually incorporated the copperplate engravings that accompanied eighteenth-century magazines yet removed the advertising wrappers that enclosed them.

Curiously, when an advertisement about the supplement ran in the January 26 edition of the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter, it looked identical to the one in the Boston Evening-Post.  If that was indeed the case, it was not the first time that those printing offices seemed to share type that had already been set, a matter for further investigation.

This entry continues an ongoing series in which the Adverts 250 Project has tracked advertisements for the Royal American Magazine from Thomas’s first notice, in May 1773, that he planned to distribute subscription proposals to newspapers advertisements in June, July, August, September, October, November, and December 1773 and January, February, March, April, May, and June1774.  No magazine appeared in July 1774 because of the “Distresses,” yet they resumed in August, September, October, November, and December.

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“JUST PUBLISHED … Royal American Magazine … For DECEMBER, 1774”

  • January 5 – Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter (first appearance)
  • January 12 – Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter (second appearance)
  • January 19 – Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter (third appearance)

“This day was published … Royal American Magazine … for DECEMBER, 1774”

  • January 5 – Massachusetts Spy (first appearance)
  • January 12 – Massachusetts Spy (second appearance)

“This Day is Published … Royal American Magazine … For DECEMBER, 1774”

  • January 16 – Boston Evening-Post (first appearance)

“THIS DAY PUBLISHED … A SUPPLEMENT to The Royal American Magazine”

  • January 23 – Boston Evening-Post (first appearance)
  • January 26 – Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter (first appearance)

“Royal American Magazine, was not printed with his Ink”

  • January 23 – Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy (first appearance)
  • January 30 – Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy (second appearance)

May 9

Carl Robert Keyes Uncategorized , , , ,

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

Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy (May 9, 1774).

“Cannot fail to give universal Satisfaction to their Customers.”

I originally selected this advertisement to further demonstrate that even though advertisers usually wrote the copy but left the format and other aspects of graphic design to compositors who worked in printing offices they sometimes gave instructions about how they wanted specific elements of how their notices to appear.  In this instance, John Barrett and Sons ran a lengthy advertisement enclosed within a border of decorative type in three newspapers simultaneously.  Their notice appeared in the Boston Evening-Post, the Boston-Gazette, and the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy on May 9, 1774.  On closer examination, however, I discovered that this advertisement presents further evidence that printing offices in Boston sometimes shared type already set for advertisements.  A week ago, I documented this with Joseph Peirce’s advertisement.

As was the case with that notice, the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy operated independently.  Among other newspapers, Barrett and Sons’ advertisement apparently originated in the Boston-Gazette before being reprinted in the Boston Evening-Post.  Notably, it ran next to Peirce’s advertisement in the May 9 edition, that type having made its way back to the printing office for the Boston-Gazette.  The visual evidence makes it difficult to dispute that some printers transferred type from one newspaper to another.  The printing ornaments that formed the border around the advertisement make that clear.  Even if the compositor for the Boston Evening-Post happened to copy the font, capitalization, italics, size, centering, left justification, right justification, and other format exactly from the Boston-Gazette, itself a highly unlikely scenario, matching the decorative type would have been practically impossible.  Note that the compositor chose one type of ornament for the upper and lower borders and a different ornament for the left and right borders, except for the last ornament before the right corner in the lower border.  In that position appears the same ornament from the left and right borders in the advertisements in both newspapers.  Furthermore, the compositor introduced one more variation midway down the left and right borders, marking where the side-by-side columns listing goods begin.  To the left of “Chints, Calicoes” and to the right of “An Assortment,” a different ornament appears, once again in both the Boston-Gazette and the Boston Evening-Post.

Barrett and Sons’ advertisement did not make it into the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter, in any form, unlike the type for Peirce’s advertisement that seems to have been transferred from the Boston-Gazette and the Boston Evening-Post to that newspaper.  That might have been due to Richard Draper’s poor health and seeking a partner to assist him in running his printing office making such coordination too difficult at that moment.  Yet the type for Peirce’s advertisement made its way into that newspaper once again on May 12 after running in the Boston-Gazetteon May 9 (but not in the Boston Evening-Post for a second time on that day).  This suggests instead that Barrett and Sons, the advertisers, made decisions about which publications would carry their advertisement, likely based on their own marketing budget and sense of which newspapers had the best circulation.  This instance raises further questions about the coordination among printing offices, especially the logistics, the bookkeeping, and the fees.  These advertisements demonstrate that printers in Boston who usually competed with each other for both subscribers and advertisers cooperated on occasion when it came to inserting advertisements in their newspapers.

Left to right: Boston-Gazette (May 9, 1774); Boston Evening-Post (May 9, 1774).

May 2

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

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

Boston-Gazette (May 2, 1774).

{ Blue }
Rich { Black and } Sattins
{ White }

Joseph Peirce’s advertisement on the front page of the May 2, 1774, edition of the Boston-Gazette stood out thanks to its unique graphic design.  The shopkeeper provided a list of merchandise that he recently imported from London, but rather than arrange it in a dense paragraph, as in most advertisements, or create columns with one item per line, as in some advertisements, this one featured one item per line with each line centered.  As a result, the text created an irregular shape with a lot of white space on either side.  That certainly distinguished the advertisement from the news in the column to the right, justified on both sides.

Advertisers usually generated copy, while compositors made most decisions about format.  When merchants and shopkeepers ran advertisements with identical copy in multiple newspapers, variations in fonts, capitalization, italics, font size, and other design elements testified to the creative work done by the compositors in each printing office.  Advertisers likely submitted general instructions with the copy for advertisements that arranged goods in columns, but that may not have always been the case.  M.B. Goldthwait’s advertisement for “DRUGS and MEDICINES” in the April 28, 1774, edition of the Massachusetts Spy, for instance, listed a variety of patent medicines in a paragraph, while his advertisement in the May 2 edition of the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy separated them into side-by-side columns.

Peirce seems to have submitted specific instructions with the copy for his advertisement.  It had the same format in the May 2 editions of the Boston Evening-Post and the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy and the May 5 edition of the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter.  They even gave the same treatment to three lines for:

{ Blue }
Rich { Black and } Sattins
{ White }

That indicates that the compositors incorporated the format that Peirce sketched when he composed the copy.  Curiously, the advertisements in the Boston-Gazette, the Boston Evening-Post and the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter appear identical, as though the printing offices shared type set in one and transferred to the others.  If that was indeed the case, it raises questions about day-to-day operating practices and collaboration among printers in Boston. Even if some printing office shared type, Pierce’s advertisements in the Boston-Gazette and the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy had minor variations while retaining the same format.  That suggests that Peirce provided his vision for his advertisement to at least two printing offices, taking an active role in designing as well as writing his notice.

Left to right: Boston-Gazette (May 2, 1774); Boston Evening-Post (May 2, 1774); Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter (May 5, 1774).

October 25

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

What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years this week?

Supplement to the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter (October 22, 1772).

“PROPOSALS For Re-Printing by Subscription … Baron de MONTESQUIEU’s celebrated Spirit of Laws”

On October 22, 1772, Richard Draper distributed a two-page supplement to accompany the standard issue of the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter.  That supplement consisted almost entirely of advertising, though it did include brief news items from London and Quebec.  A subscription proposal for an “American Edition of … Baron de MONTESQUIEU’s celebrated Spirit of Laws” filled most of the second page of the supplement.  That subscription proposal would have looked familiar to colonizers who also read the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy since it appeared in that newspaper three days earlier.  It may have also looked familiar to those who had not perused the other publication.  As I argued when examining the first appearance of the subscription proposal in Boston’s newspapers, it likely circulated separately as a handbill or broadside.

Draper adopted the same method of making the subscription proposal fit on the page that John Green and Joseph Russell used in their newspaper.  Since it was wider than two standard columns, he created a narrower third column by rotating the type to run perpendicular to the rest of the page.  Draper also added a colophon, centered at the bottom of the subscription proposal.  This method of making the broadside fit on a newspaper page was not the only similarity between its appearance in two newspapers.  It looks as though the printing offices shared the type.  If that was the case, who produced the broadside?  Draper or Green and Russell?  Even if the subscription proposal did not circulate separately as a broadside or handbill, the printers almost certainly shared type between their offices.  That was not the first time in 1772 that Draper collaborated with other printers in that manner.  In May, Jolley Allen’s advertisements in the Boston-Gazette and the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter had identical copy and format.  At the same time, Andrew Dexter’s advertisements in the Boston Evening-Post and the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter also featured identical copy and format.  At various times, Draper apparently shared type already set with three other printing offices.  Yet he was not always involved in instances of sharing type.  Advertisements for a “Variety of Goods” that ran in the Boston Evening-Post and the Boston-Gazette on October 12, for instance, appear identical, with the exception of the last two lines either added to the notice in the Boston-Gazette or removed from the one in the Boston Evening-Post to make it fit the page.  Examining advertisements reveals several other examples of printers in Boston seemingly sharing type in the early 1770s.

As I have noted on other occasions that I have identified what appears to be type transferred from one printing office to another, these observations are drawn from digitized copies of eighteenth-century newspapers.  Examining the original editions, including taking measurements, may yield additional details that either demonstrate that Boston’s printers did not share type for newspaper advertisements or that further suggest that they did indeed do so.  This question merits further investigation to learn more about business practices in printing offices that competed for both newspaper subscribers and advertisers.

Supplement to the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter (October 22, 1772).

May 25

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

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

Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy (May 25, 1772).

“ALLEN … will sell … at a very little more than the Sterling Cost.”

Jolley Allen made his advertisements in the Boston Evening-Post, the Boston Gazette, the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy, and the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter easy to recognize in the spring of 1772.  Each of them featured a border comprised of ornamental type that separated Allen’s notices from other content.  Allen previously deployed this strategy in 1766 and then renewed it in the May 21, 1772, edition of the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter.  Four days later, advertisements with identical copy and distinctive borders ran in three other newspapers printed in town.  Allen apparently gave instructions to the compositors at the Boston Evening-Post and the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy.  Those advertisements had copy identical to the notice in the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter, but the compositors made different decisions about the format (seen most readily in the border of Allen’s advertisement in the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy).  Allen’s advertisement in the Boston-Gazette, however, had exactly the same copy and format as the one in the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter.  For some of their advertisements, newspapers in Boston apparently shared type already set in other printing offices.

That seems to have been the case with Andrew Dexter’s advertisement.  He also included a border around his notice in the May 21 edition of the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter.  The same advertisement ran in the Boston Evening-Post four days later.  It looks like this was another instance of transferring type already set from one printing office to another.  The compositor for the Boston Evening-Post may have very carefully replicated the format of Dexter’s advertisement that ran in the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly Mercury, but everything looks too similar for that to have been the case.  In particular, an irregularity in closing the bottom right corner of the border suggests that the printing offices shared the type once a compositor set it.  They might have also shared with the Boston-Gazette.  Dexter’s advertisement also ran in that newspaper on May 25.  It had the same line breaks and italics as Dexter’s notices in the other two newspapers.  The border looks very similar, but does not have the telltale irregularity in the lower right corner.  Did the compositor make minor adjustments?

It is important to note that these observations are based on examining digitized copies of the newspapers published in Boston in 1772.  Consulting the originals might yield additional details that help to clarify whether two or more printing offices shared type when publishing these advertisements.  At the very least, the variations in Allen’s advertisements make clear that he intentionally pursued a strategy of using borders to distinguish his advertisements in each newspaper that carried them.  The extent that Dexter meant to do the same or simply benefited from the printing offices sharing type remains to be seen after further investigation.

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Left to Right: Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly Mercury (May 21, 1772); Boston-Gazette (May 25, 1772); Boston Evening-Post (May 25, 1772); Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy (May 25, 1772).

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Left to Right: Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter (May 21, 1772); Boston Evening-Post (May 25, 1772); Boston-Gazette (May 25, 1772).

May 13

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Supplement to the Boston-Gazette (May 11, 1772).

“Oils…  Paints…  Varnishes… GUMS.”

When it appeared in the Supplement to the Boston-Gazette on May 11, 1772, John Gore and Son’s advertisement for paint and supplies may have looked familiar to readers who regularly perused that newspaper.  After all, it ran two weeks earlier in the April 27 edition.  By the time the notice appeared in the Boston-Gazette a second time, it had also appeared in the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter twice, first on April 23 and then on May 7.  The format made it memorable, an extensive list of oils, paints, varnishes, and gums arranged as a table.  That table had sections for various shades of whites, reds, browns, yellows, blues, greens, and blacks, suggesting the many choices available to customers.  No other advertisement in any of the newspapers published in Boston at the time incorporated that distinctive design.

It was not uncommon for advertisers to place notices in multiple newspapers in order to reach more consumers and increase their share of the market.  When they did so, they usually submitted copy to the printing offices and then compositors made decisions about the design of each advertisement when they set the type.  That meant that advertisements with identical copy had variations in line breaks, font sizes, italics, and capitalization from newspaper to newspaper, depending on the decisions made by compositors.  In some instances, advertisers made requests or included instructions.  For example, some merchants and shopkeepers preferred for their merchandise to appear in two columns with only one item on each line rather than in a dense block of text.  In such cases, compositors still introduced variations in graphic design, even when working with identical copy.

That did not happen with Gore and Son’s advertisement.  Instead, the same advertisement ran in both the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter and the Boston-Gazette.  Workers in the two offices transferred type already set back and forth multiple times.  When the time the advertisement appeared in the Supplement to the Boston-Gazette, three transfers had taken place, first from Richard Draper’s printing office to the Benjamin Edes and John Gill’s printing office, then a return to Draper’s office, and once again to Edes and Gill’s office.  Early American printers frequently reprinted content from one newspaper to another.  That was standard practice for disseminating news, but it did not involve the coordination and cooperation required for sharing type.  Gore and Son’s advertisement suggests even greater collaboration among printers in Boston, a relationship that merits further investigation to understand how they ran their businesses.

May 7

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter (May 7, 1772.)

“Oils…  Paints… Varnishes… GUMS.”

John Gore and Son’s advertisement for an “Assortment of Painters Oil and Colours” available “At the Painters-Arms in Queen-Street” ran once again in the May 7, 1772, edition of the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter.  It featured a table of “Oils… Paints… Varnishes… [and] GUMS” of various colors, making it distinct from other advertisements and easy to recognize.  Among the various paints, the table offered choices that ranged from “Princess Yellow, Naples Yellow, [and] Spruce Yellow” to “India Red, Venetian Red, [and] Vermilion.”  The format both delineated the many choices available to consumers and challenged them to imagine the possibilities.

Readers of the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly Mercury had seen this advertisement before.  It ran two weeks earlier in the April 23 edition.  Unlike other advertisements that ran for consecutive weeks, however, Gore and Son’s advertisement did not appear in the subsequent issue on April 30.  Instead, it ran in the Boston-Gazette on April 27.  That was not merely a case of an advertiser submitting the same copy to two newspapers.  Careful examination reveals that the notices in the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter and the Boston-Gazette featured identical format, indicating that someone transferred the type from one printing office to another.  That made publishing Gore and Son’s advertisement a collaborative effort among competitors.  It was not the only paid notice that originated in the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly Mercury and then ran in identical format in another newspaper in the spring of 1772.  The type for Gore and Son’s advertisement eventually found its way back to Richard Draper’s printing office, where the compositor added a final line about “A few Casks of NEW RICE” but otherwise did not make any adjustments to the format.

This raised all kinds of questions about the business of printing in early America.  What kinds of bookkeeping practices did this entail?  How did Draper and other printers keep track of which type belonged to them or to competitors?  How did they go about charging advertisers for notices that ran in multiple newspapers?  Did advertisers receive a discount from those printing offices that did not have to set the type?  Or did the work involved in transferring type from one office to another balance the labor required to set type?  Printers in Boston sometimes collaborated in publishing almanacs and pamphlets.  To what extent did they collaborate in publishing the advertisements that generated significant revenue for their newspapers?

April 29

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

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

Boston-Gazette (April 27, 1772).

“Oils … Paints … Varnishes … GUMS.”

John Gore and Son’s advertisement in the April 27, 1772, edition of the Boston-Gazette raises all sorts of interesting questions.  An identical advertisement appeared in the April 23 edition of the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter.  This does not seem to have been just a case of an advertiser inserting the same notice in multiple newspapers.  That was quite common in the 1770s, especially in Boston.  Yet this was not simply an instance of an advertiser writing out the copy more than once and then submitting it to more than one printing office.  Yes, the copy was identical … but so was the format and every aspect of typography, from the design of the table listing different kinds of paints to the line breaks to font sizes to capitalization of certain words.  Rather than a compositor copying an advertisement as it appeared in another newspaper, this looks like Richard Draper’s printing office outright transferred type already set for the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter to Benjamin Edes and John Gill’s printing office for publication in the Boston-Gazette.

That was not the only instance of such a transfer in the April 27 edition of the Boston-Gazette.  John Barrett and Sons ran an extensive advertisement that previously appeared in Draper’s newspaper on April 23.  So did Joseph Peirce.  To further complicate matters, both of these advertisements also ran in the April 27 edition of the Boston Evening-Post. Once again, this does not seem to have been merely an instance of a compositor consulting an advertisement in another newspaper when setting type.  Instead, the type from one printing office found its way to another printing office.

The placement of these advertisements on the page in each newspaper contributes to some confusion about the sequence of events.  Take into consideration that a standard issue consisted of four pages created by printing two pages on each side of a broadsheet and then folding it in half.  Printers often printed the front and back pages first, filling them with the masthead, colophon, and advertisements.  They saved the second and third pages for the latest news.  Peirce’s advertisement ran on the fourth page of the April 27 edition of the Boston-Gazette, suggesting that the compositor received the type from the April 23 edition of the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly Mercury fairly quickly.  That also allowed sufficient time to pass along the type to the Boston-Evening Post for inclusion in a two-page supplement that consisted entirely of advertising.  That timing makes sense.

The timing for inserting Barrett and Sons’ advertisement in each newspaper, however, does not seem as clear.  It ran on the first page of the April 27 edition of the Boston-Gazette, printed at the same time that Peirce’s advertisement was printed on the fourth page.  It did not, however, run in the supplement to the Boston Evening-Post or even on the second or third pages among the last items inserted in the standard issue.  Instead, it appeared on the fourth page, presumably making it one of the first items printed for that issue.  The compositor did eliminate the final eight lines listing several imported goods in order to make the advertisement fit among the other content on the page, but did not make other alterations.  That someone transferred the type from one printing office to another so quickly for it to appear in the Boston-Gazette and the Boston Evening-Post on the same day suggests a very efficient operation.

This raises questions about the organization and collaboration between printing offices.  Who assumed the responsibility for transferring the type for these advertisements from one printing office to another?  Did they make sure that the type was returned to its original printing office?  Did any of the printing offices adjust the prices they charged for running these advertisements based on whether they invested time and labor in setting type?  How extensive were these practices of transferring type from one printing office to another?  These are all questions that merit further investigation.

Left: Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter (April 23, 1772). Right: Boston-Gazette (April 27, 1772).

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Left: Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter (April 23, 1772). Center: Boston-Gazette (April 27, 1772). Right: Boston Evening-Post (April 27, 1772).