Samuel Dellap

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.

September 27

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

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

New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (September 21, 1772).

“As yet there has not appeared an American Edition of this valuable Piece, what few came over were soon snatch’d up.”

Thomas Nixon sold several books at “his Shop at the Fly-Market” in New York in the fall of 1772.  In an advertisement in the September 21, 1772, edition of the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury he promoted “THE celebrated Lecture on HEADS, by George Alexander Stevens” and “the Devil upon Crutches in England, or the Night Scenes in London, a satirical Work, written upon the Plan of the celebrated Diable Boiteua of Monsieur La Sage, by a Gentleman of Oxford.”  Both books had been published in Philadelphia, The Celebrated Lecture on Heads by Samuel Dellap, whose name appeared just as prominently in the advertisement as Nixon’s own, and The Devil upon Crutches by William Evitt. According to Isaiah Thomas, Dellap traveled frequently between Philadelphia and New York, transporting books from each location for sale in the other.

Nixon composed an advertisement that deployed the popularity of those works to market them to consumers in New York.  To entice readers to purchase Stevens’s satire on fashion and physiognomy, Nixon proclaimed, “These Lectures have been exhibited in London upwards of One Hundred successive Nights, to crowded Audiences, and met with the most universal Applause.”  Consumers could experience that sensation themselves, though tangentially, by acquiring their own copies of the “celebrated Lecture.”  The advertisement went into even greater detail about audience reception of The Devil upon Crutches.  “This Satyre,” Nixon explained, “is universally approved of by all Ranks of People in Europe, and all those Parts of America where it has made its Appearance.”  The bookseller attempted to use the strength of sales elsewhere to influence local consumers, reporting that “six large Impressions were struck off in London in one Year, besides several other Impressions printed in Dublin and Edinburgh.” A few copies found their way to the colonies, met with such demand that they “were soon snatch’d up, tho’ sold at no less Price than 5s.”  Rather than five shillings, Nixon offered the first American edition of only two shillings, surely a bargain for readers who wanted to partake in the phenomenon of The Devil upon Crutches.

Today, publishers regularly cite bestseller lists and the number of copies sold in their efforts to convince consumers to purchase books that have already achieved widespread popularity.  Nixon devised a version of that strategy when he marketed The Celebrated Lecture on Heads and The Devil upon Crutches in New York during the era of the American Revolution.