Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v4.djvu/122

 534 Book Publishers and Publishing Exposed. . . to sale, by Duncan Campbell, Boston. At Boston also was issued in 171 7 -4 Catalogue of curious and valuable books, belonging to the late Reverend & learned Mr. Ebenezer Pemberton. . . To be sold by Auction, at the Brown Coffee- House in Boston, the second day of July, 1717, which is held to be our first auction sale catalogue of books. With these dates, involving as they do scholarly activity, press work of some note, printer and publisher, adumbrations at least of literary genius, and the circulation of books through carefully formulated advertisement, the history of American publishers and publication may truly be said to be under head- way. In these early days, as well, even in the stronghold of the Puritans, there were attempts at something above mere utilitarianism in books, for about 1671 John Foster, the earliest American engraver and the first person to set up a press in Boston (in 1675), had published an engraved portrait of Richard Mather. In the same town in 1731 appeared what is regarded as our first portrait engraved on copper plate. Clearly the pioneer position in American publication be- longs to Cambridge and Boston, and the latter city was to hold first place as a publishing centre until about 1765, when Philadelphia was to eclipse it, an eclipse from which it was not to emerge imtil about the fourth decade of the nine- teenth century. William Bradford in 1682 landed in Pennsyl- vania, and by 1685 was printer and publisher of The Kalen- darium Pennsilvaniense. Bradford's career in Pennsylvania was far from happy, however. Twice he was summoned before the governor, once put under heavy bond, and once thrown into jail; so that in 1 693 he departed in wrath for New York. For the next six years there appears to be no record of printing in the colony. But Philadelphia was too highly favoured in the eighteenth century by geographical situation and by political, financial, and social currents not to begin soon to assert herself. Already as early as 1740 a would-be magazine publisher had stated in a few words the dominant reasons for the leadership of Phila- delphia during its some sixty years of hegemony : As the City of Philadelphia lies in the Center of the British Plantations, and is the Middle Stage of the Post, from Boston in New England Northward^, down to Charlestown in Carolina South-