Colonial Press Research Articles

Neither Printer's Wife nor Widow: American Women in Typesetting, 1830-1950

Women have been active in American printing since the establishment of the first colonial press. Most historians who acknowledge this cite the contributions of printers' daughters, wives, and widows. This study focuses instead on women employed as typesetters in printing offices where they had no family connections. Special attention is given to the arguments raised against the employment of women, the threat their labor represented to male typesetters, and their relations with the typographical union. Sources consulted while preparing this paper include publications of the national union and several local subordinate unions, internal records of the Chicago local, government reports, books, and newspaper and magazine articles.

The Entertaining Press

This article, a study of sensationalism In the early Boston press, presents the thesis that the colonial press, especially in Boston, catered to a mass literate audience by stressing stories of sensation, human interest and scandal. It attacks the conventional view that the modern press, which emphasizes entertainment, was born In the mid-nineteenth century in the form of the "penny press. " A close analysis of the early Boston press shows that most of the features of the modern press were present well before the turn of the nineteenth century. Three factors contributed to this journalistic development. First, the early American press inherrted a tradition of sensationalism from the English press, a culture reinforced throughout the eighteenth century by the colonial press's reliance on British newspapers for copy. Second, the urban and frontier environments of colonial America provided a steady pattern of violent and sensational events about which enterprising printers were eager to publish stories. Third, mass literacy in eighteenth-century Massachusetts, which cut across social classes, stimulated the colonial printer's efforts to publish an entertaining newspaper This study is based on a content analysis of Boston newspapers published in the period 1704-1784. It concentrates on a sample of issues of all known papers published in the colony in six randomly selected years: 1710, 1720, 1740, 1748, 1768, and 1784. Nearly 1,800 stories are Included in the analysis.

Ideals, Interests and Civil Liberty: The Colonial Press and Freedom, 1735–76

Ideals, Interests and Civil Liberty: The Colonial Press and Freedom, 1735–76

Labor Law. Condonation. Employer's Offer to Reinstate Lawfully Discharged Employees during Subsequent Strike Does Not Constitute Forgiveness of Past Misconduct Unless Employees Accept Offer by Returning to Work during Strike. NLRB v. Colonial Press, Inc., 509 F. 2d 850 (8th Cir. 1975)

Labor Law. Condonation. Employer's Offer to Reinstate Lawfully Discharged Employees during Subsequent Strike Does Not Constitute Forgiveness of Past Misconduct Unless Employees Accept Offer by Returning to Work during Strike. NLRB v. Colonial Press, Inc., 509 F. 2d 850 (8th Cir. 1975)

Hamilton's Literary History of the Maryland Gazette

HE best belletristic essay of colonial Maryland appeared in the Maryland Gazette for June 29, 1748. Signed with the well-known name of the seventeenth-century author of Los Suenos, Don Francisco de Villegas, this essay is actually a literary history of the first three years of the Maryland Gazette. It criticizes nearly all the writings, literary and political, by local authors that had appeared in the paper since Jonas Green had started it in the early spring of 1745. There are many earlier examples of literary criticism in America, but this is the first criticism of a large body of American authors. Quevedo briefly characterizes every local author and often compares him with other provincial writers. Aside from its intrinsic literary worth, the essay is valuable because it tells what a cultivated, contemporary observer thought of the local productions of the colonial press, and especially because it testifies to the importance of the newspaper in the intellectual life of the colonist. Obviously Quevedo had a complete file of the Maryland Gazette from I745, and read every issue thoroughly and critically. Furthermore, Quevedo helps us to identify the authors of the anonymous and pseudonymous poems and essays in the Gazette, including the prolific poet James Sterling and Franklin's old enemy, John Webb(e). The author skillfully fuses several literary genres. The pseudonym tells the reader that the writer is deliberately imitating the form of the satiric Lucianic tradition, best known to English readers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries through Sir Roger L'Estrange's paraphrase of Quevedo's Visions.1 The tour through hell also recalls the greatest of all descriptions of descents into hell, Dante's Inferno. And so our colonial author mocks himself even in the selection of his literary form, for here in the

Virginia House of Burgesses, 1750-1774

Journal Article Virginia House of Burgesses, 1750–1774. By Lucille Griffith. (Northport, Ala.: Colonial Press, 1963. xii + 245 pp. Notes, appendices, bibliography, and index. $7.50.) Get access William D. Hoyt, Jr. William D. Hoyt, Jr. Rockport, Massachusetts Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 51, Issue 1, June 1964, Pages 103–104, https://doi.org/10.2307/1917946 Published: 01 June 1964

Public Opinion in Colonial America: Content-Analyzing the Colonial Press

Among the mass media the newspaper has been by all odds the first and foremost, until recent decades, in expressing and shaping public opinion. Especially interesting is its role in the formative period of our nation. Here is a scholarly discussion of an application of content analysis to the colonial press that is not without meaning for research in the current scene. Richard L. Merritt is Assistant Professor of Political Science and research director of the Political Science Research Library at Yale University. This article is part of his study of “Symbols of American Community, 1735–1775.” He is currently studying public opinion and elite attitudes in postwar Germany.

Colonial Theocracy and a Secular Press

The American colonial press won its freedom from interference by religious authorities in a gradual process, highlighted by the experiences of William Bradford in Pennsylvania and of James Franklin in Massachusetts. The author made his study while a doctoral candidate at New York University.

The Development of the Colonial Newspaper

Journal Article The Development of the Colonial Newspaper. By Sidney Kobre. (Pittsburgh: Colonial Press, Inc., 1944. xi + 173 pp. Illustrations, charts and tables, appendix, and bibliography. $3.50.) Get access Viola F. Barnes Viola F. Barnes Mount Holyoke College Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 31, Issue 4, March 1945, Pages 612–613, https://doi.org/10.2307/1895354 Published: 01 March 1945

KOBRE, SIDNEY. The Development of the Colonial Newspaper. Pp. xi, 188. Pitts burgh: The Colonial Press, privately printed, 1944. $3.50

KOBRE, SIDNEY. The Development of the Colonial Newspaper. Pp. xi, 188. Pitts burgh: The Colonial Press, privately printed, 1944. $3.50

The Revolutionary Colonial Press—A Social Interpretation

Mr. Kobre's sociological approach to the analysis of the press has found expression in three articles published in past issues of the Journalism Quarterly. They appeared in September, 1936; June, 1937; and December, 1940.

The Constitutional Convention in the Colonial Press

The Constitutional Convention in the Colonial Press

Our Astronomical Column

MR. TEBBUTT'S OBSERVATORY, WINDSOR, NEW SOUTH WALES.—Mr. John Tebbutt, the well-known and enthusiastic amateur astronomer of New South Wales, has just published a little pamphlet giving a history and description of his private observatory, the work of which, he remarks with justifiable pride, “has proved of sufficient importance to admit of Windsor being placed in the list of observatories in the British and American Nautical Almanacs, the Connaissance des Temps, and the Berliner Astronomisches Jahrbuck.” And this distinction has been well earned, for the lists here given of observations made, and of papers contributed to various scientific publications, show the history of the little observatory to have been a most honourable one. Mr. Tebbutt has made all the observations himself, and until 1881 performed all the reductions; latterly he has received occasional assistance in the computations from his son or friends near. His instrumental equipment was for many years of the most modest description: for seven years it consisted principally of a sextant, and a telescope of if inches aperture. In 1861 a refractor of 3 1/4 inches aperture, and in 1864 a transit instrument of 2 inches, were added. In 1872, Mr. Tebbutt became the possessor of an equatorial of 4½ inches, which was his chief instrument until about a year and a half ago, when he bought a fine 8-inch equatorial by Grubb, once the property of the late Dr. Bone, of Castlemaine. The observations made have been principally of comets, for a number of which Mr. Tebbutt has also computed orbits, but daily meteorological observations have been kept up for twenty-five years, the results of which have been published in five parts, and transit observations have been taken regularly for time. Mr. Tebbutt has also done good service to science by his papers on astronomical subjects in various organs of the colonial press, for hitherto the private pursuit of astronomy has been greatly neglected in the Australian colonies, and he has almost stood alone as an amateur observer. It is to be hoped that this record of his labours and his success may call forth many imitators.