PREFACE.

HE design of this work is to present, as far

as possible, full and strictly accurate descriptions of the titles, with collations, of every book, pamphlet and broadside printed in the Province and State of Pennsylvania, during the first hundred years of the operations of the press within their limits. Nearly six years have been devoted to the work, and within that period every bibliography, library and sale catalogue coming under the compiler's notice from which any information seemed likely to be obtained, has been carefully examined. Every newspaper published in Pennsylvania prior to 1785, as far as access could be had, has been searched. This involved a perusal of each advertisement in from fifty to one hundred and fifty-six newspapers, contained in nearly two hundred and fifty yearly volumes. The principal libraries of America and England have also been visited. The titles which have thus been brought together amount to upwards of forty-five hundred, and probably represent nearly all the issues of the press, with the exception of broadsides, of which a much larger number must have been printed than are now known to exist.

The chronological arrangement of the titles shows

the growth of our literature and development of literary taste. Religion and politics, which engrossed the attention of our local writers during the first forty years, predominate to the end, but the leaven of fancy introduced in 1731, by George Webb and the unknown. author of the "Lady Errant Enchanted" worked spasmodically until 1760, when some poem or play came forth at least annually from a native pen. Medicine, in the tracts of Cadwalader, Thomson, Kearsley, Hamilton, Macleane, and others; higher mathematics, in the essays of Grew, Gordon, Abel, and Rittenhouse; philosophy, natural and experimental, in the works of Johnson and Kinnersley, appear with increasing frequency from 1740, and history, in the work of Morgan Edwards, from 1770. Numerous treatises on military affairs were called forth by the Revolution, one of which, "Steuben's Manual," maintained its position as a text-book till well into the present century. Such reprints of English or American publications, as were issued during the first eighty years, were almost all of the same character as those of our local writers. The exceptions being such practical or instructive treatises, as "Every Man his own Doctor," "The Secretary's Guide," and "Fisher's American Instructor."

The elder Bradford's press was most prolific in the productions of one side of a petty schism, known as the Keithian controversy, while the publications of his successor, Jansen, were mainly devoted to the utterances of the opposite side, in a sequel to the earlier quarrel. Beyond establishing a newspaper the issues of Andrew

Bradford's press show no enterprise on his part as a publisher. He was printer to the Province, and with his father joint printer to the Province of New Jersey. The emoluments derived from these positions, with the profits of his newspaper, afforded him a comfortable income, and he printed only such works as local authors brought or the Quaker meeting required, leaving the reading public of his day to depend upon his importations for their acquaintance with contemporaneous literature.

Keimer, remembered mainly through Franklin's sneers, in reprinting" Gordon's Independent Whig" and "Steele's Crisis," was the first proprietor of a press to rise above the mere printer. His press, for its short existence, was very fruitful, and produced, in Sewel's "History of the Quakers," the largest volume printed here prior to 1748, and in "Epictetus his Morals" the first translation of a classic writer issued in America. Franklin's sole deviation from the line adopted by Bradford was the reproduction of Richardson's "Pamela," his other publications not of a strictly practical kind, being the works of local writers or reprints of English tracts on questions of the day. William Bradford, the grandson of the first printer, followed in the same path, and neither Chattin or Dunlap ventured far enough away from it to be worthy of mention. Robert Bell, with, perhaps, the exception of Andrew Steuart-who reprinted a number of popular English works-was the first to present, in home-made garb, a judicious selection from every class of literature current in England. Beginning with "Johnson's Rasselas"

in 1768, he published "Lady Montague's Letters and Poems," ""Blackstone's Commentaries" in four quarto volumes, "Sterne's Sentimental Journey," "Robertson's History of Scotland" in three volumes, "Leland's History of Ireland" in four volumes, "Robinson Crusoe," "Paradise Lost," travels, plays, poems, and novels innumerable. His success in offering cheap editions soon compelled his fellow printers to enter the same field. James Humphreys, the publisher of "Sterne's Works," in five volumes, and "Chesterfield's Letters," in four, and Robert Aitken, who printed the first American editions of the New Testament and Bible in English, were his most active rivals.

The German presses produced little else than Bibles and Catechisms, Hymn-books and Prayer-books, "Martyr Books" and ghost stories. These volumes are remarkable for their bulkiness, but with the exception of the publications of the Ephrata Community are almost all reprints of European works. The "Zionitischer Weyrauchs-Huegel" printed by Sower, in 1739, was the first book printed in America from German type, and the Bible, issued in 1743 from the same press, was the first printed in a European language in America. The "Martyr Book," printed at Ephrata, in 1748, was the largest work which appeared in America prior to the Revolution.

The first newspaper published in the middle colonies was the "American Weekly Mercury," begun in 1719 by Andrew Bradford. As Franklin says, it "was a paltry thing, wretchedly managed, and no ways entertaining." Keimer's "Universal Instructor," begun in 1728 was not