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

“Exterminate Ignorance and Darkness, by the noble Medium of SOCIAL LIBRARIES.”

Today Henry Know is acclaimed as an American general during the Revolutionary War and the nation’s first Secretary of War, appointed when George Washington formed the first presidential cabinet.  In May 1774, however, he was a young bookseller in Boston.  Just a few months shy of his twenty-fourth birthday, he ran the “LONDON BOOK-STORE” and advertised an “ELEGANT, VALUABLE & LARGE ASSORTMENT of BOOKS” in the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter.  He was a veteran advertiser by that time, having previously placed newspaper advertisements and distributed engraved trade cards.  He also passed out book catalogs, “which may be had gratis,” as part of his marketing efforts.  Like many other entrepreneurs, Knox did not rely on newspaper notices alone to generate interest and incite demand for his wares.

Knox stocked works by “the latest. Most learned, and most approved Authors, in all Branches f Literature,” from “ANATOMY” and “ARCHITECTURE” to “DIVINITY” and “HISTORY” to “PHILOSOPHY” and “SURGERY.”  He listed thirty genres, offering something to attract just about any reader.  He also carried “Magazines, Reviews, and other new Publications of Merit, by every Opportunity after they come out in London,” though he did not mention if he sold the Royal American Magazine, published by Isaiah Thomas in Boston.  Knox supplemented revenues from books by peddling patent medicines, a common practice among printers and booksellers at the time.

Knox sought various kinds of customers for the books that he imported.  While readers were always welcome to visit the London Book-Store to peruse and purchase the titles on hand and pick up a catalog, the bookseller also aimed to supply “Country Merchants, [and] Traders” with books and pamphlets for their retail operations, whether they were shopkeepers with fixed locations in towns beyond Boston or itinerant peddlers who hawked a variety of wares as they traveled from village to village.  Knox also hoped that members of social libraries would acquire books from him.  Public libraries did not yet exist, but clubs formed to open private libraries that gave members who paid subscriptions or other fees access to a greater number of books than they could afford to purchase on their own.  Knox lauded such initiatives, commending “Those Gentlemen in the Country who are actuated with the most genuine Principles of Benevolence in their Exertions to exterminate Ignorance and Darkness, by the noble Medium of SOCIAL LIBRARIES.”  Prospective customers purchasing on behalf of those institutions likely wished to collect from among many or even most of the genres that the bookseller highlighted in his advertisement.  Knox’s marketing strategy included diversifying the kinds of customers he served as well as stocking a wide selection of books, pamphlets, magazines, and other reading material.