An influential editor and publisher in the years following the founding of the American Republic, Mathew Carey helped to shape public opinion on the subjects of national unity, economic development, and literature. From an obscure beginning in Philadelphia in 1785, Carey's publishing business grew to become the largest in the United States in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. For twenty years he was the leading publisher of the quarto family Bible, and he was a pioneer in the effort to organize a national distribution system for books.

The publishing venture which first brought Carey to national attention was a monthly magazine, the American Museum, or Repository of Ancient and Modern Fugitive Pieces. Running from 1787 to 1792, it was the most highly esteemed and widely read American magazine of its time. It came to share with the Columbian Magazine; or Monthly Miscellany (which Carey had helped to found in...