Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v4.djvu/126

 538 Book Publishers and Publishing Lancaster, and Germantown in Pennsylvania; Brattleboro, Vermont; Hartford, Connecticut; Burlington, New Jersey; Charleston, South Carolina; Lexington, Kentucky; and New- port, Rhode Island, were early of some note, while in 1834 Hartford was said to be our largest school-book publishing centre. The reprinting of standard literature referred to above first begins to make itself noticed about 1744. In that year was published Cicero's Cato Major, while New York, Philadelphia, and Boston each issued an edition of Richardson's Pamela or Virtue Rewarded, the sub- title of which, together with its British reputation for unimpeachable piety, caused thus early even a Boston publisher to risk bringing it out. As late as 1800 Mathew Carey's printer wrote to him "if you can think of printing a Novel." Very early, however, graceless New York had found, in the person of Hugh Gaine, one of the most interesting of all American publishers, a producer not only of novels but of what north of Virginia at least was usually looked upon with even greater disfavour, that is, plays. In the one year of 1 761 alone he put out not less than twenty-two plays, more than one of which was by a Restoration dramatist. The decorous publishers of Philadelphia and Boston followed less radical paths, reading aright the comparative conservatism of their public. Moreover, it is risking little to say that the trouble which befell Gaine during the Revolution was not aU political but was acidulated by Puritan rancour over the class of his publications. Within a few years of 1761 Andrew Stewart, of Philadelphia, issued two or three plays; but in general the press of that city reflected a staid psychology, while Boston contented itself with the Puritan tenor of The Messiah, Night Thoughts, and The Day of Doom, a tenor which was not to be changed materially until the last decade of the eighteenth century. The Revolutionary period was quite different from any that had preceded it. Before the war, although the issues of the American press showed, as noted, a sprinkling of non-theo- logical works, they were nevertheless overwhelmingly religious in character. But now politics becomes of first importance, and we pass from dominant figures to the frequent anonymity