One of the most important printer-publishers of his generation and generally known for publication of the newspaper, the Massachusetts Spy, and numerous children's books, Isaiah Thomas also is notable for publishing three magazines during his lifetime. His first magazine, the Royal American Magazine, or Universal Repository of Instruction and Amusement, was a general content, short-lived publication, which Thomas began in January 1774. His Worcester Magazine, published from 1786 until 1788, was a substitute for the Spy, whose publication Thomas suspended in protest of a tax on newspapers passed by the Massachusetts legislature. His last magazine venture, the Massachusetts Magazine: or, Monthly, Museum, of Knowledge and Rational Entertainment , published under various owners from 1789 through 1796, was one of the most important eighteenth-century American magazines.

Thomas's heritage also includes The History of Printing in America, the first history of its kind, which he published in 1810, and the founding of the American Antiquarian Society in...