The autograph of Eben Holt makes the contents of the magazine ludicrous as subjects of interest to a boy But having nothing better, Eben most surely read it from cover to cover.
In Charleston, South Carolina, Robert Wells imported the books read by the members of the various branches of the Ravenel, Pinckney, Prioleau, Drayton, and other families. Boston supplied the juvenile public largely through E. Battelle and Thomas Andrews, who were the agents for Isaiah Thomas, the American Newbery.
An account of the work of this remarkable printer of Worcester, Massachusetts, has been given in Dr. Charles L. Nichols’s “Bibliography of Worcester.” Thomas’s publications ranked as among the very best of the last quarter of the eighteenth century, and were sought by book-dealers in the various states. At one time he had sixteen presses, seven of which were in Worcester. He had also four bookstores in various towns of Massachusetts, one in Concord, New Hampshire, one in Baltimore, and one in Albany.
In 1761, at the age of ten, Thomas had set up as his “’Prentice’s Token,” a primer issued by A. Barclay in Cornhill, Boston, entitled “Tom Thumb’s Play-Book, To Teach Children their letters as soon as they can speak.” Although this primer was issued by Barclay, Thomas had already served four years in a printer’s office, for according to his own statement he had been sent at the age of six to learn his trade of Zechariah Fowle. Here, as ’prentice, he may have helped to set up the stories of the “Holy Jesus” and the “New Gift,” and upon the cutting of their rude illustrations perhaps took his first lessons in engraving. For we know that by seventeen hundred and sixty-four he did fairly good work upon the “Book of Knowledge” from the press of the old printer. Upon the fly-leaf of a copy of this owned by the American Antiquarian Society, founded by Thomas, is the statement in the Worcester printer’s handwriting, “Printed and cuts engraved by I. Thomas then 13 years of age for Z. Fowle when I. T. was his Apprentice: bad as the cuts are executed, there was not at that time an artist in Boston who could have done them much better. Some time before, and soon after there were better engravers in Boston.” These cuts, especially the frontispiece representing a boy with a spy-glass and globe, and with a sextant at his feet, are far from poor work for a lad of thirteen. “The battered dictionary,” says Dr. Nichols, “and the ink-stained Bible which he found in Fowle’s office started him in his career, and the printing-press, together with an invincible determination to excel in his calling, carried him onward, until he stands to-day with Franklin and Baskerville, a type of the man who with few educational advantages succeeds because he loves his art for his art’s sake.”
In supplying to American children a home-made library, Thomas, although he did no really original work for children, such as his English prototype, Newbery, had accomplished, yet had a motive which was not altogether selfish and pecuniary. The prejudice against anything of British manufacture was especially strong in the vicinity of Boston; and it was an altogether natural expression of this spirit that impelled the Worcester printer, as soon as his business was well established, to begin to reprint the various little histories. These reprints were all pirated from Newbery and his successors, Newbery and Carnan; but they compare most favorably with them, and so far surpassed the work of any other American printer of children’s books (except possibly those of Bache in Philadelphia) that his work demands more than a passing mention.
Beginning, like most printers, with the production of a primer in seventeen hundred and eighty-four, by seventeen hundred and eighty-six Thomas was well under way in his work for children. In that year at least eleven little books bore his imprint and were sent to his Boston agents to be sold. In the “Worcester Magazine” for June, 1786, Thomas addressed an “Advertisement to Booksellers,” as follows: “A large assortment of all the various sizes of Children’s Books, known by the name of Newbery’s Little Books for Children, are now republished by I. Thomas in Worcester, Massachusetts. They are all done excellently in his English Method, and it is supposed the paper, printing, cuts, and binding are in every way equal to those imported from England. As the Subscriber has been at great expense to carry on this particular branch of Printing extensively, he hopes to meet with encouragement from the Booksellers in the United States.”
Evidently he did meet with great encouragement from parents as well as booksellers; and it is suspected that the best printed books bearing imprints of other booksellers were often printed in Worcester and bound according to the taste and facilities of the dealer. That this practice of reprinting the title-page and rebinding was customary, a letter from Franklin to his nephew in Boston gives indisputable evidence:
Philada. Nov. 26, 1788.
Loving Cousin:
I have lately set up one of my grand-children, Benja. F. Bache, as a Printer here, and he has printed some very pretty little Books for Children. By the Sloop Friendship, Capt. Stutson, I have sent a Box address’d to you, containing 150 of each volume, in Sheets, which I request you would, according to your wonted Goodness, put in a way of being dispos’d of for the Benefit of my dear Sister. They are sold here, bound in marbled Paper at 1 S. a Volume; but I should suppose it best, if it may be done, to sell the whole to some Stationer, at once, unbound as they are; in which case I imagine that half a Dollar a Quire may be thought a reasonable Price, allowing usual Credit if necessary.