University of Virginia Library

Mathew Carey[1] came to America from Ireland in 1784, after a brief stay in Paris where he had worked with Benjamin Franklin in his Passy printshop. With the aid of a $400 loan from the Marquis de La Fayette he began his publishing career in Philadelphia. Among his earlier publications were the Pennsylvania Herald, first issued on January 25, 1785; the Columbia Magazine, in October, 1786, with five partners; and in 1792, the first book printed with Greek type in America.[2]

Although he had been a printer in Ireland before fleeing to avoid persecution for political pamphleteering, Carey did not do all of his own printing. When, in 1793, he decided to publish a second American edition of Jefferson's Notes on Virginia [3] in 1,000 copies, he engaged Parry Hall at "149 Chestnut near Fourth" to be the printer.

Hall composed the work in Edmund Fry's Pica Roman No. 1 and Pica Italic No. 2.[4] As soon as he had pulled a proof sheet, he sent it to Jefferson on July 25, 1793, with a note:

So far as can be determined, Jefferson made no textual changes; however, a curious alteration occurred which cannot be attributed specifically to either the author or printer. In all prior editions of the Notes, numbers (in parentheses) had been used to refer to the appended material containing Charles Thomson's comments on various passages in the text. Hall's sheets, however, used upper-case letters[6] in lieu of numbers. This change persists in most of the subsequent editions of the Notes and is an indication of the copy utilized in their composition.[7]

Hall and his daughter are listed among those who died between the first of August and the middle of December in the Philadelphia plague of 1793.[8] Thereafter,

the firm of Wrigley and Berriman moved into his shop and completed the printing of Carey's edition of the Notes, continuing with signature E. By the time they got to working sheet O, Carey increased his edition to 1500 copies,[9] and Wrigley and Berriman were forced to reset and run 500 additional sheets of the first three gatherings, B, C, and D. This explains the differences in the settings of these first three sheets. The two different states are easily distinguished. Hall ran his sheets on thin or ordinary paper, while Wrigley and Berriman used a thick paper water-marked A L MASSO that is clearly superior to the ordinary paper.[10]

The presswork was probably done on a full sheet imposed eight pages up, in a "work and turn" operation; thus, 750 sheets were printed on one side, and the sheets were then turned and worked on the other side with the same eight pages. Each sheet thus produced two copies of the same signature.[11] Printing was completed by November 10, 1794, and the bill for the job was submitted to Carey.[12] From this bill we can learn the full details of the cost and production of the book. The bill lists the following items:

• To printing 1500 copies Jeffersons Notes on Virginia containing 42 forms and 4 pages 8vo . This means, of course, 336 pages + 4, i.e., 42½ formes or really 43 formes to be charged at press.
• COMPOSITION To 40 forms 6888 m a form &c.mmat; 2/9 a thousand is 19/3 a form 38.10.0 Composition is still computed by the thousand ems. An em is the square of the body of a type. Each text-page of this book required 861 ems, or 6888 ems for the eight-page forme.
• To 2 pages pica 4.9 These are the title, advertisement, and contents pages. Probably the three pages were lumped together and charged as two normal pica pages.
• To 2 forms long primer 11026 ms a form &c.mmat; 2/9 a thousand is 30/3 a form 3.0.6

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  These two formes, or 16 pages, are the tables in the text. They average about 1378 ems per page.
• To 2 pages brevier 4752 ms &c.mmat; 2/9 13.9 These are the small footnotes and such matter. They have 2376 ems per page. The composition to this point makes 42 formes plus 4 pages, as totaled above.
• To a table equal to 3 pages long primer 3675 &c.mmat; 2/9 11.0 This was undoubtedly the folding table of Indian Tribes, and represents the cost of composition only.
• PRESSWORK To 43 forms at press each form 6 Tok &c.mmat; 2/9 is 16/6 a form 35.9.6 Since a token is 250 impressions, and the edition was 1500, 6 tokens were required. Paper was no doubt furnished by Carey.[13]
• To presswork of the table 6 Tok 16.6 Although this was a smaller forme than the regular eight pages, it took the pressman just as long to run it; hence there was the same charge as for a regular forme, or 16/6. The total bill was £79.6.0; but since Parry Hall had already worked 1,000 copies of the first three formes, this was deducted from the bill:
• Deduct 4 Tok from each of the 3 first forms is 12 Tok &c.mmat; 2/9 1.13.0 The final bill, then, was £77.13.0. The printing was completed on November 10, 1794, and the imprint dated November 12th. Carey advertised the book as available ". . . in about three or four weeks . . ." in the Philadelphia Gazette of Monday, November 17th. On November 26th he listed the Notes as ". . . neatly bound—1 dollar and a half."