The result of Newbery’s first efforts to follow Locke’s advice was so satisfactory that his wares were sought most eagerly. “Very soon,” said his son, Francis Newbery, “he was in the full employment of his talents in writing and publishing books of amusement and instruction for Children. The call for them was immense, an edition of many thousands being sometimes exhausted during the Christmas holidays. His friend, Dr. Samuel Johnson, who, like other grave characters, could now and then be jocose, had used to say of him, ‘Newbery is an extraordinary man, for I know not whether he has read or written most Books.’”[51-*]
The bookseller was no less clever in his use of other people’s wits. No one knows how many of the tiny gilt bindings covered stories told by impecunious writers, to whom the proceeds in times of starvation were bread if not butter. Newbery, though called by Goldsmith “the philanthropic publisher of St. Paul’s Churchyard,” knew very well the worth to his own pocket of these authors’ skill in story-writing. Between the years seventeen hundred and fifty-seven and seventeen hundred and sixty-seven, the English publisher was at the height of his prosperity; his name became a household word in England, and was hardly less well known to the little colonials of America.
Newbery’s literary associations, too, were both numerous and important. Before Oliver Goldsmith began to write for children, he is thought to have contributed articles for Newbery’s “Literary Magazine” about seventeen hundred and fifty-eight, while Johnson’s celebrated “Idler” was first printed in a weekly journal started by the publisher about the same time. For the “British Magazine” Newbery engaged Smollett as editor. In this periodical appeared Goldsmith’s “History of Miss Stanton.” When later this was published as “The Vicar of Wakefield,” it contained a characterization of the bookseller as a good-natured man with red, pimpled face, “who was no sooner alighted than he was in haste to be gone, for he was ever on business of the utmost importance, and he was at that time actually compiling materials for the history of Mr. Thomas Trip.”[52-*] With such an acquaintance it is probable that Newbery often turned to Goldsmith, Giles Jones, and Tobias Smollett for assistance in writing or abridging the various children’s tales; even the pompous Dr. Johnson is said to have had a hand in their production—since he expressed a wish to do so. Newbery himself, however, assumed the responsibility as well as the credit of so many little “Histories,” that it is exceedingly difficult to fix upon the real authors of some of the best-known volumes in the publisher’s juvenile library.
The histories of “Goody Two-Shoes” and “Tommy Trip” (once such nursery favorites, and now almost, if not quite, forgotten) have been attributed to various men; but according to Mr. Pearson in “Banbury Chap-Books,” Goldsmith confessed to writing both. Certainly, his sly wit and quizzical vein of humor seem to pervade “Goody Two-Shoes”—often ascribed to Giles Jones—and the notes affixed to the rhymes of Mother Goose before she became Americanized. Again his skill is seen in the adaptation of “Wonders of Nature and Art” for juvenile admirers; and for “Fables in Verse” he is generally considered responsible. As all these tales were printed in the colonies or in the young Republic, their peculiarities and particularities may be better described when dealing with the issues of the American press.
John Newbery, the most illustrious of publishers in the eyes of the old-fashioned child, died in 1767, at the comparatively early age of fifty-four. Yet before his death he had proved his talent for producing at least fifty original little books, to be worth considerably more than the Biblical ten talents.
No sketch of Newbery’s life should fail to mention another large factor in his successful experiment—the insertion in the “London Chronicle” and other newspapers of striking and novel advertisements of his gilt volumes, which were to be had for “six-pence the price of binding.” An instance of his skill appeared in the “London Chronicle” for December 19, 1764-January 1, 1765:
“The Philosophers, Politicians, Necromancers, and the learned in every faculty are desired to observe that on the 1st of January, being New Year’s Day (oh, that we may all lead new lives!) Mr. Newbery intends to publish the following important volumes, bound and gilt, and hereby invites all his little friends who are good to call for them at the Bible and Sun in St. Paul’s Churchyard, but those who are naughty to have none.”[54-*]
Christopher Smart, his brother-in-law, who was an adept in the art of puffing, possibly wrote many of the advertisements of new books—notices so cleverly phrased that they could not fail to attract the attention of many a country shop-keeper. In this way thousands were sold to the country districts; and book-dealers in the American commonwealths, reading the English papers and alert to improve their trade, imported them in considerable quantities.
After Newbery’s death, his son, Francis, and Carnan, his stepson, carried on the business until seventeen hundred and eighty-eight; from that year until eighteen hundred and two Edward Newbery (a nephew of the senior Newbery), who in seventeen hundred and sixty-seven had set up a rival establishment, continued to publish new editions of the same little works. Yet the credit of this experiment of printing juvenile stories belongs entirely to the older publisher. Through them he made a strong protest against the reading by children of the lax chap-book literature, so excellently described by Mr. John Ashton in “Chap-Books of the Eighteenth Century;” and although his stories occasionally alluded to disagreeable subjects or situations, these were unfortunately familiar to his small patrons.
The gay little covers of gilt or parti-colored paper in which this English publisher dressed his books expressed an evident purpose to afford pleasure, which was increased by the many illustrations that adorned the pages and added interest to the contents.