CHAPTER IV

1776-1790

Patriotic Printers and the American Newbery

When John Mein was forced to close his London Book-Store in Boston and to return to England in 1770, the children of that vicinity had need to cherish their six-penny books with increased care.  The shadow of impending conflict was already deep upon the country when Mein departed; and the events of the decade following seventeen hundred and seventy-three—­the year of the Boston Tea-Party—­were too absorbing and distressing for such trifling publications as toy-books to be more than occasionally printed.  Indeed, the history of the American Revolution is so interwoven with tales of privation of the necessities of life that it is astonishing that any printer was able to find ink or paper to produce even the nursery classic “Goody Two-Shoes,” printed by Robert Bell of Philadelphia in seventeen hundred and seventy-six.

In New York the conditions were different.  The Loyalists, as long as the town was held by the British, continued to receive importations of goods of all descriptions.  Among the booksellers, Valentine Nutter from time to time advertised children’s as well as adults’ books.  Hugh Gaine apparently continued to reprint Newbery’s duodecimos; and, in a rather newer shop, Roger and Berry’s, in Hanover Square, near Gaine’s, could be had “Gilt Books, together with Stationary, Jewelry, a Collection of the most books, bibles, prayer-books and patent medicines warranted genuine.”

Elsewhere in the colonies, as in Boston, the children went without new books, although very occasionally such notices as the following were inserted in the newspapers: 

     Just imported and to be Sold by Thomas Bradford

     At his Book-Store in Market-Street, adjoining the Coffee-house

     The following Books ...

     Little Histories for Children,

     Among which are, Book of Knowledge, Joe Miller’s Jests, Jenny
       Twitchells’ ditto, the Linnet, The Lark (being collections of best
       Songs), Robin Redbreast, Choice Spirits, Argalus & Parthenia,
       Valentine and Orson, Seven Wise Masters, Seven Wise Mistresses,
       Russell’s seven Sermons, Death of Abel, French Convert, Art’s
       Treasury, Complete Letter-Writer, Winter Evening Entertainment,
       Stories and Tales, Triumphs of Love, being a Collection of Short
       Stories, Joseph Andrews, Aesop’s Fables, Scotch Rogue, Moll
       Flanders, Lives of Highwaymen, Lives of Pirates, Buccaneers of
       America, Robinson Crusoe, Twelve Caesars.