For the People.

While Mathew Carey and Isaiah Thomas created a publishing industry and prided themselves on the printer's craft, they also sold popular works at low cost. Throughout the country small presses turned out "chapbooks," small, relatively cheap editions of books printed on inexpensive paper. Some booksellers, such as Chapman Whitcomb, spent most of their time traveling and selling copies of their books for a few pennies a copy.

Itinerant Bookseller.

Graduating from Dartmouth College in 1785, Whitcomb became a minister but did not succeed as one, either through his lack of faith or his eccentric nature. He taught school for a while and supplemented his income by collecting rags to sell to a local paper maker. Selling rags to make paper led Whitcomb into the other end of the paper industry, writing books. His several dozen books were printed in Leominster, Massachusetts, by Charles...