The Public Prints The Newspaper in Anglo-American Culture, 1665-1740

by Clark, Charles E.

• ISBN13: 9780195082333
• ISBN10: 0195082338
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1994-01-06
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

The Public Prints is the first comprehensive study of the role of the earliest American newspapers in the society and culture of the eighteenth century. In the hands of Charles E. Clark, American newspaper publishing becomes a branch of the English world of print in a story that begins in the bustling streets of late seventeenth-century London and moves to the provincial towns of England and across the Atlantic. While Clark's most detailed attention in America is to the three multi-newspaper towns of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, evidence from Williamsburg, Charleston, and Barbados also contributes to generalizations about the craft and business of eighteenth-century publishing. Stressing continuing trans-Atlantic connections as well as English origins, Clark argues that the newspapers were a force both for "anglicization" in their attempts to replicate English culture in America and for "Americanization" in creating a fuller awareness of the British-American experience across colonial boundaries. He suggests, finally, that the newspapers' greatest cultural role in provincial America was the creation of a community bound by the celebration of common values and attachments through the shared ritual of reading.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Artifact	p. 3
English Backgrounds
Genealogy	p. 15
The Metropolis	p. 32
The Provinces	p. 55
America: Narrative
John Campbell, Pioneer American Newspaperman, 1704-1719	p. 77
Competition, 1719-1732	p. 103
The Couranteers, 1721-1726	p. 123
"A Fine Taste for Good Sense and Polite Learning": The Literary Newspaper, 1727-1735	p. 141
Three Cities: A Richer Tapestry, 1728-1740	p. 165
America: Structures and Transition
The Printer as Publisher	p. 193
The Ritual: The Reader's World	p. 215
The Newspaper in Culture	p. 243
The Transition	p. 258
Appendix	p. 267
Notes	p. 269
Index	p. 319
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