More Summer Reading

I'm back from my family vacation in North Carolina and glad to be out of the sun for awhile. In the past week, I managed to make a significant dent in my summer reading list. If I wasn't swimming, surfing, bodyboarding, or building sandcastles, I read the first few chapters of James Moorhead's Princeton Seminary in American Religion and Culture and began working again on my publishing history project. For the latter, I mined M. X. Lesser's Reading Jonathan Edwards, read the introduction to the final volume of The Works of Jonathan Edwards: Volume 26: Catalogues of Books, superbly edited by Peter J. Thuesen, and read the entirety of David Copeland's Debating the Issues in Colonial Newspapers and Lawrence Wroth's classic book, The Colonial Printer. In the evenings, my family and I enjoyed having access to cable television. We watched episodes of "Duck Dynasty," "Treehouse Masters," and "The Call of the Wildman" with "Turtleman."

   

All this reading on colonial newspapers inspired me to purchase copies of two editions of Thomas Prince's The Christian History, published between the years 1743 and 1745. Prince and his son sought to use their magazine to promote the revivals that were taking place on both sides of the Atlantic in the early 1740s. I was pleased to be able to buy editions of The Christian History that featured excerpts from James Robe's account of revivals that had taken place in Kilsyth, Scotland in 1742.

If you are interested in purchasing copies of early newspapers, take a look at Timothy Hughes website.

The Thrill of Colonial Printing

Today, while witnessing a colonial printing demonstration in Boston, I was given the privilege of printing my very own copy of the Boston Gazette's original printing of the Declaration of Independence. At 21 Unity Street in Boston, near the Old North Church, Gary Gregory, posing as Benjamin Edes, printer of the Boston Gazette at the time of the American Revolution, has set up an authentic colonial print shop. He produces copies of Paul Revere's engraving of the Boston Massacre and the Boston Gazette's printing of the Declaration of Independence. For those of you interested in the history of the book and colonial printing, this is a must-see stop in Boston.

When I told Gary that I had done some research on Samuel Kneeland, who printed the Boston Gazette before Edes and Gill, he invited me to take on his role as the printer. A deal was struck: he would let me print a broadside if I sent him my article, "Samuel Kneeland of Boston: Colonial Bookseller, Printer, and Publisher of Religion," that was published in the January 2012 issue of Printing History.  Being able to work the press was quite a thrill for me. I was excited to see how a colonial press worked, having read about the process. Thanks Gary!

Below are some images taken from my digital camera. A woman in the audience took the pictures, but, unfortunately, many of the images came out blurry.