Franklin's Poor Richard Almanacs:
Their Printing and
Publication
by
C. William Miller
[*]
On December 28, 1732, Benjamin Franklin announced in the
Pennsylvania Gazette that he had just published the first
edition
of a new almanac, the Poor Richard for 1733, by Richard
Saunders, Philomath. The address to the reader was an amusing one in
which Richard pleaded poverty as his reason for undertaking the writing of
the almanac and concluded with the prediction that Mr. Titan Leeds, the
writer of the most popular almanac in the Middle Colonies, would die in
October of the ensuing year. The Swiftian trick was an old one, and
Franklin's delaying until after the other Philadelphia almanacs were on sale
to launch his new publication seems on the surface to have been ill-timed,
but the purchasers liked what they read, bought out the first edition, and
called for a second, and then a third during the early weeks in January. In
this final printing Franklin appears either to have over-extended himself or
to have set his sights on a market larger than that of the
Province of Pennsylvania, for in March, 1733, he shipped 500 almanacs to
his partner Whitmarsh in Charleston, and in the following August, 300 and
200 almanacs respectively to his brother James in Newport and Thomas
Fleet in Boston, this last at 1/5/0 per hundred, a figure twenty-five per cent
higher than Franklin was to charge Whitmarsh for new ones the next year.
It is remarkable enough that a Boston bookseller would be interested in
Philadelphia almanacs which were almost out of date—harder to
believe
that he would buy them for the price he did. Perhaps in the intervening
months the reputation of the Poor Richard had spread to New
England, and Fleet saw an opportunity belatedly to satisfy the curiosity of
his customers. In any case Franklin successfully rid himself of the
remainder of his third impression and made a
start in creating a geographically wider market for his next year's
almanac.
Thus began the successful publication of the Poor
Richard
almanacs, a series that ran on into the nineteenth century though Franklin
was responsible as author only for the first twenty-five, those from 1733 to
1758. By 1739 the sales had risen so sharply that the almanac-maker
presented himself in his preface as hard-pressed to justify any longer his
name "Poor" Richard, but excused himself jestingly with the claim that
"When I first began to publish, the printer made a fair Agreement with me
for my copies, by virtue of which he runs away with the greatest Part of the
Profit." Eventually as Franklin states in his Autobiography
the
printing reached "annually near ten thousand"[1] copies, and when finally in the
almanac
for 1758 Franklin strung together a selection of his wise-sayings in the form
of an old man's rambling discourse on economy, publishers here in the
colonies and in Europe began reprinting the piece under the title A
Way
to Wealth and quickly created for Poor Richard an international
reputation.
So much for the widespread popularity of Franklin's almanacs and the
main facts of their publication which to Franklin scholars are a familiar
story. My principal concern here is to deal with the hitherto unattended
study of the printing of these famous almanacs: (1) the imposition, (2) the
determination of reimpressions, (3) the problems of the text, and finally (4)
their sale and distribution.
Before I turn to this fourfold discussion, however, it is necessary to
clarify two matters. The first is that, under the name of Richard Saunders,
Franklin published not one but three separately titled almanacs: the original
Poor Richards from 1733 to 1747, the enlarged Poor
Richards Improved from 1748 to 1758, and starting in 1741, the
much smaller Pocket Almanacs. I plan in this paper to deal
only
with the first two series of publications. The Pocket
Almanacs,
strikingly different in format and text from the others, merit separate
study.
The second matter needing brief consideration is the number of copies
extant today. Franklin, as we noted earlier, fixed the peak number of copies
printed in any one year as near ten thousand, but he does not tell us when
publication reached that level; it is improbable that he was printing anything
like that number in the first years. But even if, from the number of copies
preserved, we were to assume that he ran off 3600 copies in 1733, and half
again as many in each of the
next few years, it is clear at the outset that we can scarcely hope to
reconstruct the full history of their printing.
No one library has a complete run of the first fifteen almanacs. Of the
1733 almanac there exist two copies, neither of which is the first state of
the first printing where Franklin acknowledged in the Gazette
that he had mistakenly transposed two pages. The largest number of copies
preserved for any single year is twelve; the average for most of the others
is eight, though of the Poor Richards for 1734, 1735, and
1745,
we have but three copies apiece.
Copies of the Poor Richards Improved are somewhat
more numerous. The average for each of the years from 1748 to 1758 is
seventeen, with eleven libraries possessing complete runs though
approximately one-quarter of these are imperfect.[2]
With this background we may turn now to the first of the major
considerations—the format and imposition of the first fourteen of the
original Poor Richards, from the start in 1733 through the
almanac for 1746. In their perfect states these almanacs consist of three
unsigned gatherings in 4's—in all, twelve leaves. The format is
octavo
with each four-leaf gathering consisting of one-half sheet of Pro Patria
stock, a paper roughly 12½" by 15½" which Franklin used almost
exclusively during his first decade of printing. Described in terms which an
eighteenth-century London bookseller would understand, the Poor
Richard resembles somewhat those British almanacs called "sorts."
It devotes one, not two, pages to each month; offers the reader no blank
pages for notes, though a handful have survived interleaved; and beginning
with the almanac of 1735, it prints the holy days in black letter but without
rubrication.
Franklin had open to him two methods of imposition. He could have
imposed formes of two of his three signatures together (twin half-sheet
imposition), or he could have imposed together the outer and inner formes
of a gathering (single half-sheet imposition), and after perfecting end with
two copies of the same signature. The evidence points to Franklin's
journeymen having used regularly the second method, for numerous copies
contain watermarks in all three gatherings and exhibit the use of the
identical rules in the rule-frames of all three signatures.
The second major consideration—that of determining
reimpressions—offers no great obstacles among the very earliest
Poor Richards. Franklin himself indicated "The Third
Impression" of the 1733 almanac
and the "Second Edition" of the
Poor Richard for 1734 on the
title-pages (Plate 1, no. 2).
The difficulty arises, however, with the almanacs of the late 1730's
and early 40's where one finds in the text little more than proof corrections,
dropped letters, and changes in alignment as the bases for distinguishing the
several impressions which Franklin advertised in the Gazette
that he had run off. It is possible by these means to determine tentatively
a few of the impressions, but the one piece of evidence for distinguishing
the various reprintings, I discovered, lay not within the letterpress but in the
varying configurations and broken parts of the single rules framing each
page of text. Confirmation of the validity of this evidence occurs first in the
labeled later printings of the 1733 and 1734 Poor Richards
where the rule-frame for each page differs in its configuration from those
in the earlier printings, and, second, in the direct and consistent
correspondence between frame-rule patterns and marked variants in the
text.
Working with the evidence of the varying rule patterns, I turned first
to the 1737 almanac where among the seven extant copies there occur no
variants in the text. The compositor in imposing his formes treated the
frame-rules as parts of the furniture and after each machining inserted the
letterpress for the new forme page for page into positions occupied by the
corresponding pages in the previous forme. All seven copies are clearly
from the same printing with the rule-frames matching exactly, gathering
after gathering in both the outer and inner formes.
Distinguishing the several impressions of the 1738 almanac is more
difficult, partly because the printing of the Poor Richards had
apparently by this year settled into a routine shop procedure involving
compositors with different work habits hurrying to complete their jobs, and
partly because it became evident that the rule-frame configurations while
suggestive offered too many variations to be completely reliable evidence.
The only trustworthy guide here proved to be several distinctive broken
frame-rule fragments in one series of formes. These could be traced in
whatever position they occurred.
With their help it was possible to distinguish two impressions of the
1738 almanac. The compositor in this year followed the method of
imposition of his fellow worker in the 1737 Poor Richard
with
but one exception. Instead of transferring his furniture page for page and
corresponding forme for forme, he moved it in one impression exhibited by
the Huntington copy from inner A to outer B and C, and in the
other impression, of which the remaining ten preserved copies are
examples, from outer A to inner B to outer C.
The surest way of telling the two impressions apart is to locate and
follow the reoccurrences of a short (7 mm.) side-rule fragment appearing
always near the top of the frame. In the one impression it stands as a part
of the right side-rule on A2, B1, and C1; in the other, it forms a part of the
left side-rule on A2v, B1v, and
C2v.
The proof for determining which of the two impressions of the 1738
almanac was first printed is equally clear-cut. In the Huntington copy page
B3v (Plate 3, no. 1) exists in the unproofed state; the
identical page in
the New York Public copy (Plate 3, no. 2) and the other nine extant copies
is corrected. Since the rule-frame evidence just presented indicates that the
printing of the Huntington copy was a continuous process, the priority
claimed for B3v holds for the other pages of the text as
well; and the
Huntington copy stands, therefore, as the one preserved example of the first
impression; the remaining ten copies, as examples of the second.
Distinguishing the reimpressions of the 1739, 1740, and 1742
almanacs is not so simple as that for the 1738 almanac. For one reason, not
all of these almanacs have broken rules; but more important, I encountered
evidence that makes futile the attempt to label precisely the several
reprintings of these three almanacs. The copies of the Poor Richard
for 1739 highlight the problem. A broken top-rule in the American
Philosophical Society copy with the break toward the left occurs on
A3v, B4v, and C3v
(Plate 3, no. 3), a not unexpected
inner-outer-inner alternation. The same broken top-rule occurs also in all
three signatures of the Boston Public copy, but this time the rule falls on
C4v rather than on C3v, and in the A and
C signatures is turned
about so that the break is closer to the right than to the left—all
evidence
pointing clearly to another printing. The difficulty arises with the B
signature where the rule break on B4v lies closer to the
left
than to the right, just as in the APS copy. Any speculation that the MB
copy is unique, and this confusion perhaps the result of sophistication, is
demonstrated to be false, for the copies in the Rosenbach, Yale,
Pennsylania, and Library Company collections agree with the Boston
Public. The lone reasonable explanation which does not contradict the
orderly procedure of imposition exhibited by the other Poor
Richards is that Franklin's binders stitched together at random
half-sheets from different printings. This explanation would help also in
accounting for the odd combination of gatherings in the Franklin Institute
copy where the
rule break on A3
v lies to the right as in the MB copy, but
where the
B and C gatherings, unlike those of any other extant copy, contain no
broken rules—evidence that Franklin either replaced the fragmented
rules
during the second impression or ran off still a third impression.
The likeliest explanation for this apparent confusion which I can
offer, and I do so only conjecturally, is this. Franklin, knowing that he
could not tie up his press at any time long enough to run off all the copies
of an almanac needed in a given year, anticipated the demand by machining
several smaller impressions as his press fell free. A printing of 1200 copies
run off at the rate of 250 sheets an hour would take only a day and one-half
of steady presswork if Franklin's pressmen could match the pace which
those in Moxon's day were capable of setting.[3] After each of the printings except
the last,
Franklin normally kept his type standing, having removed the type pages
from the forme, laid aside the rules, and bound the pages of standing type
with twine until they were needed for another run. When that time came,
his compositor reimposed the type pages, fitted them with new rules or the
old ones in whatever configuration they happened to fall,
and locked his forme. Thus, it is possible to account for the several
different impositions which probably represented in Franklin's thinking
merely interrupted segments of a single long machining and can only
technically, therefore, be termed distinct impressions. Further, it explains
how when Deborah Franklin and her helpers came to the stitching, they had
sheets from two or three printings to draw upon.
The format and imposition of the last of the original Poor
Richards, the almanac for 1747, differ from those of its
predecessors
and offer an easy transition to the consideration of the printing of the
Poor Richards Improved, the first of which appeared in the
following year, 1748. The 1747 almanac, like the earlier ones, contains
three unsigned gatherings in fours, but the format in this year is duodecimo,
not octavo. The chain-lines run horizontally and segments of watermarks
appear toward the top of the outer margins. Franklin had thus in 1747
discarded his three Pro Patria half-sheets per copy in favor of one sheet of
demi, roughly 15" by 20" and marked with a fleur-de-lis.
The shift from octavo to duodecimo, I believe, was experimental,
looking forward to the publication in 1748 of his "Improved" almanac,
enlarged to thirty-six pages. This increase permitted Franklin to devote two
pages of text to each month in imitation, as he explained in the preface, of
the "well known method" of his friend Jacob Taylor, whose
long established almanac had stopped appearing with his death in 1746.
Franklin in the interval had arranged with the colonial papermakers to
supply him with adequate supplies of the larger sheets—the initials
in the
watermarked paper of the later almanacs can be traced to local
mills—and
had almost certainly acquired a new press with a larger platen than his first
one. The firm of Franklin and Hall owned at the dissolution of their
partnership in January, 1766, according to James Parker, "Three Presses,
one much shattered."
[4]
The Poor Richards Improved for 1748 to 1758 were
printed on one and one-half sheets of demi paper imposed in duodecimo
with six signed gatherings, A4 B2
C4 D2 E4
F2.
It is likely that Franklin and Hall followed the established practice of
printing this new almanac in three half-sheets as they had done with the old
one, but there is no clear evidence to prove the point. In these later
almanacs each page of text is enclosed with a frame of double-rules usually
so well fitted that they offer no distinctive variations in configuration
helpful in distinguishing reimpressions. The formes do contain a series of
recurring broken rules, but their evidence is useful only in establishing how
David Hall, Franklin's former journeyman, and after 1747 his working
partner, handled the storing of the standing type used in succeeding
editions.
It had been Franklin's practice from the outset to keep standing as
much of the text of the Poor Richards as he could reprint
with
only slight alteration the following year; this included the title-page, the
month head-titles, the numbering of the days, the holy days set in black
letter, a group of recurring features, and nearly all of the final
signature—the places and dates of court sessions and fairs,
advertisements, and the routes with mileage from Philadelphia
northeastward to Norridgewock and southwestward to Charleston. He stored
this type without the accompanying frame-rules. Starting with the
Poor
Richard Improved for 1748, Hall carried over from one year to the
next the double-rule frames with the standing type. Two broken side-rules
present in the 1748 almanac reappear in the frames of copies for each
succeeding year until 1758 when Hall replaced all of the frame-rules. James
Parker, Franklin's former partner in New York and his agent at the
dissolution
of the Franklin-Hall partnership in 1766, confirms the bibliographical
evidence of Hall's practice by a chance remark in a letter to Franklin in
England dated February 3, 1766, some two months after the 1766 almanac
had been printed: ". . . we weigh'd the Forms
and Pages of Almanacks etc. with all their Rules in and about them. . .."
[5]
The analysis of the printing procedures for the original Poor
Richards and for the Poor Richards Improved just
presented indicates comparatively few significant departures from normal
printer's practice; it does, however, verify Franklin's announcement of
reprintings, sometimes as frequently as three within a year, especially
among the almanacs from 1733 to 1747. The next question—and the
third
major consideration in this paper—is what textual variations do the
almanacs show, particularly those several times reprinted.
At the outset it is worth remembering that printers thought of these
publications as primarily a money-making venture. They ran off large
quantities of the popular ones, sold them very cheaply, and since the
demand fell largely during the months of December and January, realized
a quick return on their investment. Franklin's attitude toward his
Poor
Richards, I am convinced, was no exception despite his being author
as well as printer and despite his growing pride in the widespread
popularity of his almanac. My collating of the texts of the extant copies has
turned up frequent textual variation, but no extensive rewriting. Franklin's
chief concern was to see his original text reproduced in type accurately and
literally correctly. The many changes that occur stem almost entirely from
efforts to make do with inadequate stocks of type or from his workmen's
faulty practices, over which, even during his years as master, Franklin
seemed helpless to exercise control.
Like any good printer he insisted that his almanac copy be proofread;
this practice did not, of course, prevent some unproofed sheets like the B
gathering in the Huntington copy of 1738 (Plate 3, no. 1) from getting into
circulation. Stop-press corrections waste press time; consequently few of
them are to be found in the Poor Richards. Franklin's
practice
where several impressions were planned was usually to make the
corrections between printings. In the lone impression of the 1745 almanac
Franklin did, however, stop his press, but only long enough to insert an
errata list in the A signature covering the misprints in gatherings B and C.
In doing so, he indicates incidentally the reverse order in which he
machined the signatures. First, he ran off the C gathering, the one which
consisted largely of text kept standing from year to year and which could
therefore be made ready most conveniently for the press, then the B
gathering, and, finally, the A signature, containing the
preface, the portion which Franklin, were he pressed for time, could
compose last without delaying the printing of the greater portion of the
almanac. That the errata list is actually a stoppress
insertion is evident in that it occurs in the New York Public copy (Plate 3,
no. 4) but is missing from that of the American Antiquarian Society.
The major factor contributing to widespread textual variation,
however, especially in the original Poor Richards, was
Franklin's limited font of long primer, both text letter and planet sorts, and
his very short supply of long primer black letter. The frequent scattered
variants conjure up a picture of Franklin's compositors continually filching
letter from the standing type of the almanacs between printings for use in
other current printing, and later replacing it, at times carelessly. In several
Poor Richards one finds new literal errors occurring in
second
and third impressions which carry proof corrections caught after the first
run.
The greatest disturbance in the text appears in those few instances
where the compositors were forced for lack of letter to tear down whole
pages or entire signatures and then reset them, probably hurriedly, for the
new settings are often textually inferior to the original ones. The reset page
in the 1740 almanac, for instance, is markedly faulty by Franklin's
standards (Plate 4, no. 3).
So far I have dealt generally with the many minor variants to be
found throughout the texts of the Franklin almanacs, particularly in the
early ones. Once the printing house began to prosper, acquire additional
fonts and presses, and increase the number of journeymen, the printing of
the Poor Richards became a less eventful procedure. By 1750
Hall was running off most of his yearly large editions as a single operation.
The variants disappear except where stop-press changes were intended
beforehand or a rare mistake occurs.
It remains now to discuss in detail those almanacs notable for their
variants, certain of which have heretofore gone unrecorded. Those widely
recognized for years by collectors and rare book dealers include the two
printings of the 1733 almanac. The earlier Rosenbach Museum copy is
reproduced in the initial volume of The Writings of Benjamin
Franklin (1959) and "The Third Impression" owned by the
Historical
Society of Pennsylvania was reprinted in facsimile by The Duodecimos in
1894. Of the twenty-four pages in the Rosenbach copy, four entire pages
and portions of six others are in a setting different from that of the HSP
copy. Franklin announced in the Gazette three impressions of
the 1733 almanac. Whether the Rosenbach copy is a part of the corrected
issue of the first impression—it does not have the months of
September
and October transposed—or of the second impression it is not
possible to
determine in the light of present knowledge.
Well known also is the unique copy of the "Second Edition" of the
1734 almanac in the library of the American Philosophical Society (Plate
1, no. 2). Three of its pages and portions of three others are in a different
setting from that of the first edition. The textual variants in it as in the 1733
almanac resetting are confined to changes in capitalization, spelling, and
punctuation.
Equally well known are Franklin's two stop-press alterations in the
almanacs of 1744 and 1748, designed it seems to stimulate wider sale of his
Poor Richards outside the Province of Pennsylvania. In the
Huntington and HSP copies of the 1744 almanac Franklin has altered the
imprint to read: "Printed and sold by B. FRANKLIN. Sold
also
by JONAS GREEN at Annapolis" (Plate 5, no.
2).
No other bookseller enjoyed this special designation in the entire
twenty-five years of Franklin's authorship.
The alternate page settings of F1v in the 1748
almanac are, for
readers living in the Middle Colonies, a listing of the Pennsylvania
governors, speakers of the Assembly, and mayors of Philadelphia (Plate 5,
no. 3); and, for New England readers, a listing of the dates of court
sessions in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island
(Plate 6, no. 1). Two other such substitutions which appear to have escaped
notice occur in the Boston Public copy of the 1749 almanac (Plate 6, no.
2) and in the Yale, Huntington, and New Jersey Historical Society copies
of the 1751 almanac. In the MB copy of 1749 the page-long listing of the
New England court dates appears on F2 in place of "A
TABLE
for the more ready casting up of Coins, in
Pennsylvania" found in all the other copies of the 1749 almanac which I
have examined; in the Yale, Huntington, and New Jersey Historical Society
copies of 1751 the same New England court list replaces on
F2v the
mileage
table for roads northeastward and southwestward found regularly in
preserved copies of the 1751 Poor Richard Improved. In the
MB, New Jersey Historical Society, Huntington and Yale copies the court
list is printed from the same body of standing type, differing from the New
England court list in the MB copy of the 1748 almanac (Plate 6, no. 1) only
in the relineation of the Connecticut court list and the expansion of the text
of the courts of Rhode Island.
The variants in the almanacs of 1736, 1749, and 1755 constitute the
principal new material emerging from this study. That of 1755 is more of
a bibliographical oddity than an important textual change. Hall's compositor
reversed in his imposition of the D signature the two pages of the month of
September (Plate 8, no. 3), committing once again the mistake Franklin had
made in his first Poor Richard. The only copy that I have
found
with the error is that in the Boston
Public Library; the other extant copies show the correct arrangement.
More significant is the discovery that the copy of the 1736
Poor
Richard in the Library of the American Philosophical Society is a
unique resetting (Plate 2) —the one almanac of the original fifteen
which
may be said to exist virtually in two editions, though Franklin gave no hint
of this fact either on the title-page or in his announcement in the
Gazette. In all, seven copies of the almanac have come down
to us, one of them from the second printing, the result possibly of
Franklin's having to work with a limited font of long primer; the other six,
parts of the first uncorrected edition. The several jobs he had in hand at the
time reveal, I think, the cause of his difficulties.
In the final months of 1735, Franklin's shop-force was working on
three almanacs, Franklin's and those of John Jerman and Jacob Taylor, the
largest number which Franklin had yet attempted to print in one year. All
three are advertised as "now in press" in the Gazette on
November 13. If we may rely on the "Just Published" announcements that
appear in the later issues of the Gazette for the order in
which
Franklin printed the almanacs, the Jerman almanac was finished first
(November 27). Jerman invariably included some features so similar to
those later used by Franklin in the Poor Richards that the
printer found it convenient to print whole pages of the same type-setting in
both almanacs. The second almanac printed was Franklin's (December 4),
and then came Taylor's (December 24).
Once the presswork was completed on the Poor
Richard,
it is clear from a comparison of the APS copy with the earlier ones that the
compositor distributed the type for all pages except the title and the final
four leaves, the greater portion of which Franklin regularly kept standing
from year to year. One can only guess at the reasons for Franklin's
consenting to the distribution of the type. Perhaps he thought he had printed
enough copies to satisfy the trade and then later discovered that he had
underestimated the demand, or it could be that if he kept the text of his
Poor Richard standing, his compositor would lack sufficient
letter to set the Taylor almanac. Whatever the circumstances, this much is
clear. At some point after running off Taylor's almanac, Franklin saw that
he needed more copies of his own almanac.
In the type-setting that followed, more extensive by far than that in
any of the other original Poor Richards, Franklin added point
to his jesting in the preface by italicizing the phrases "appear publickly" and
"in print" (Plate 2, no. 2), corrected several transposed planet symbols on
A3v, replaced two black-letter T's mistaken for C's on
B4v, and
made a major change in typographical arrangement that set the pattern for
his later almanacs. It is this last alteration that offers conclusive proof of the
order of the two settings rather than the textual corrections, for in the other
Poor Richards, much resetting usually done in haste tends to
yield inferior, not superior textual readings. In the almanacs prior to this
one of 1736 and in the first printing of this almanac, Franklin set in italic
type both his weather predictions and his wise-sayings throughout the
left-hand column of the calendar for each month. In the second edition of
1736, and in the later almanacs, he set the prognostications in roman and
only the wise-sayings in italic, presumably to distinguish the one from the
other more clearly for his reader. The evidence that Franklin had decided
in the first printing to set both predictions and proverbs in italic type, and
only later decided to reset the predictions in roman rests with the
typographical pattern found in "November" and "December" (C1 and
C1
v), the two months out
of the twelve in which the type was left standing after the first printing, and
therefore used again in the second printing. In these two months both
predictions and wise-sayings are set in italic type. Hence in six of the seven
copies of the 1736 almanac, which I have labeled parts of the first edition,
the typographical pattern is consistent throughout all twelve months; in the
APS copy—the lone copy of the second printing —the pattern
is
consistent for the first ten months, and then markedly different in the last
two.
The Poor Richard Improved for 1749 offers clearly the
most interesting variants I have encountered in this investigation. A starting
point is the attention Franklin himself focused upon its text in the preface
to his almanac for 1750. He wrote:
In my last, a few Faults escap'd; some belong to the Author, but
most to the Printer. Let each take his Share of the Blame, confess, and
amend for the future. In the second Page of August, I
mention'd
120 as the next perfect Number to 28; it was wrong, 120 being no perfect
Number; the next to 28 I find to be 496. . . . In the 2d Page of
March, in some Copies, the Earth's Circumference was said
to
be nigh 4000, instead of 24000 Miles, the Figure 2 being omitted at the
Beginning. This was Mr. Printer's Fault; who being also somewhat
niggardly of his Vowels, as well as profuse of his Consonants, put in one
Place, among the Poetry, mad, instead of
made, and
in another wrapp'd, instead of warp'd; to the
utter
demolishing of all Sense in those Lines, leaving nothing standing but the
Rhime. These, and some others, of the like kind, let the Readers forgive,
or rebuke him for, as to their Wisdom and Goodness shall seem meet. . .
. (A1v)
Poor Richard's confession appears to be a full and candid one both
for his own errors and those of his printer, and couched as it is in
somewhat bantering terms was evidently designed to amuse his readers and
to dispel any bad opinion they may have harbored concerning the previous
edition. Further, some readers must have remembered Poor Richard's
earlier insistence in perpetuating the jest that he was an individual in his
own right (Plate 2, no. 2), and not Franklin, both the author and the
printer. But in the 1749 almanac for the first time matters were different.
Franklin was only the author, and David Hall, Franklin's newly acquired
partner, had the sole responsibility for printing the almanac. The 1750
almanac preface read in this light may perhaps take on a somewhat different
meaning, and with what mixed feelings Hall viewed Franklin's public
reprimand of his work one can only guess.
An examination of the text and printing of the 1749 almanac reveals
even more interesting detail on what may possibly have been a momentarily
strained relationship between the new partners. The almanac, I found, exists
in not one but two printings, the only edition of the Poor Richards
Improved to appear in this fashion. Further, in the second
impression
the three pages of the address to the reader have been entirely reset (Plate
7, no. 2).
What disturbed Franklin, now retired from an active role in the
printing business and absorbed in his scientific studies, was, I suspect,
finding in a copy of the first printing of the 1749 almanac which came to
hand the omission of the "2" in the phrase "24000 Miles." His discovery
of the error was mere chance, for the missing numeral having been pushed
down had stopped inking during the run and was, therefore, neither the
result of compositorial carelessness nor faulty proofreading. Three extant
copies of the first machining, those in the Library of Congress, Boston
Public, and the American Philosophical Society, reveal the "2" faintly
inked. Franklin's statement ". . . in some Copies . . . the Figure 2 being
omitted . . ." I construe to mean not the variant readings in the first
printing, but the re-elevation of the numeral in the second impression where
in the preserved copies it appears consistently. A non-inking type was, of
course, no unique fault with Hall's printing.
One can find a dozen occurrence of the same sort in the earlier Poor
Richards printed during the years in which Franklin had been master
of the printing house.
If my assumption is accurate—and it is buttressed by the fact
that
none of the other errors mentioned in the 1750 preface were caught either
by Franklin or Hall in time to be rectified in the second printing
—then
it was ostensibly the missing "2" that brought Franklin down to the printing
shop to register a protest. What he found must have
pleased him. Hall had completed his first impression and had in fact
ordered the distribution of the type in the three pages of the preface. It is
difficult to believe that Franklin would have insisted on Hall's resetting the
three pages and running off another impression merely to correct one error.
Evidently Hall had been obliged to redistribute some of his standing letter
and free his press for a more urgent job, and planned on a second
impression later.
Franklin saw to it that the "2" was inking properly and took the
opportunity to revise and enlarge the section on the Courts of Assize in
Maryland (Plate 7, no. 4). What Franklin does not mention in the 1750
preface is that he had discovered or had called to his attention another error
of his own making which he quietly corrected—or thought he had
corrected—in the only other rewritten passage to be found within
different machinings of a single almanac. As an historical note under
November he had written: "The 5th of this month,
November, seems
to be a lucky day to the English church and
British
liberty; for on that day 1588, the popish gunpowder treason was detected;
and on the same day in 1688, just one hundred years after, our glorious
deliverer from popery and slavery, King William, landed at
Torbay." (Plate 8, no. 1). In the second impression Franklin,
of course, changed "1588" but to "1604" instead of the correct date, 1605,
and deleted "just one
hundred years after"; reluctant, however, to forego the allusion to
significant events occurring in the year '88 of succeeding centuries, he
added: "Eighty-eight seems likewise a lucky year; for in 1588
was the Spanish Armada defeated" (Plate 8, no. 2).
Finally as the fourth major consideration in this paper, it seems
appropriate in an investigation that concerns itself with the history of the
printing and publication of the Poor Richards, to attempt to
bring together the sketchy and scattered facts relating to their sale and cost.
From the outset in 1733 Franklin designed his almanac for use principally
in Pennsylvania and the surrounding colonies. On his title-page he
announced that it was "Fitted to the Latitude of Forty Degrees," which is
that of the city of Philadelphia, but went on to add, that it ". . . may
without sensible Error, serve all the adjacent Places, even from
Newfoundland to South-Carolina" (Plate 1, no.
1).
In his list of court session dates he included from the beginning those of
New York, New Jersey, and Maryland as well as Pennsylvania. The
substitution of the page of New England courts appeared with the first of
the Poor Richards Improved in 1748, and reappeared in 1749
and
1751; the addition of the list of Virginia courts came later, in 1754, 1755,
and again in 1758.
The single greatest reason for the success of the Poor
Richards was Franklin's ability to spice the prosaic matter of the
ordinary almanac with more engaging commentary than his competitors
could write, but certainly most helpful in promoting the large sales were the
publicity the almanacs received in his widely circulated Pennsylvania
Gazette and the willingness of a group of partners and friendly
booksellers in colonies other than Pennsylvania to handle the Poor
Richards and advertise them locally in their own newspapers.
The entries in the extant Franklin account books[6] are too incomplete for one to
estimate the
total number of almanacs printed each year for sale outside of the province;
we do know, however, that in the 1730's he was sending annually from 200
to 500 copies to his partners Whitmarsh and later Timothy in Charleston,
to his brother James in Newport, and to Fleet in Boston (FAB I, 36-37).
Starting with the 1743 almanac Franklin appears to have increased greatly
the size of his printings. Thomas Fleet ordered 300 Poor
Richards (FAB II, 54-55). Parker in New York received 2000
copies
(pp. 91-92); James's widow in Newport, 600 (pp. 55-56); and Mrs.
Timothy her usual 300 (p. 121). Green in Annapolis increased his order in
1743 to 1500 copies and took a like number in 1744 (p. 64), the year
Green's name was added to the imprint of the lot he had purchased. After
1748 when Franklin began publishing his Poor Richard
Improved, the size of the
printings remained steady. Hall in 1765 credited the partnership with an
aggregate total of 141,257 copies for the fourteen years from 1752 to
1765,[7] an average slightly in excess
of the "near ten thousand" annually which Franklin had set down as an
estimate in his memoirs.
The information on the prices of the Franklin almanacs is even more
fragmentary than that on the numbers printed. For the original Poor
Richards we must rely almost entirely on the entries in the extant
Franklin account books (FAB I and II), which list the number of copies sold
but often omit the price charged as though Franklin kept the records of his
almanac sales in a special ledger no longer preserved.
The retail price of an individual copy Franklin tells us by oblique
reference in the 1737 almanac preface was "Fi' pence," and the cost per
dozen, 3s.6d., according to the "Just
Published"
announcement of the first Poor Richard in the
Gazette for December 28, 1732. This is the same price which
Franklin charged for the Jerman (FAB II, 47),
Ball, or Birket by the dozen, and a half shilling cheaper than the almanacs
of Leeds or Godfrey (FAB I, 37). The price of the
Poor
Richards in lots of 100 copies was understandably cheaper. To his
favored Charleston partner Timothy in 1734, the cost was £1 per 100
(FAB I, 36), as it was likewise to Jonas Green of Annapolis in 1743 and
1744 (FAB II, 64), the years in which he bought 1500 copies; but normally
the price per 100 was set at 1/5/0, a figure which held without change from
1732 to 1746 (FAB I, 37; II, 54, 63-64). The currency of Pennsylvania
remained, in fact, remarkably stable during the entire twenty-five years of
the publication of the Franklin almanacs and in the price of these
publications, at least, reflected none of the inflationary pressures present in
the currency of Massachusetts where the cost of the Ames almanacs, for
instance, rose from 8
d., or 6
s. a dozen, in
1743 to
1
s.6
d., or 12
s. a dozen,
in 1749.
[8]
What exactly Franklin charged for a single copy of his Poor
Richard Improved I have not yet been able to discover, but the
statement which he inserted on the titles of his almanacs for 1748 and 1749
leaves no doubt that the cost had increased: "Note, This
Almanack us'd to contain but 24 Pages, and now has 36; yet the Price is
very little advanc'd." The inference is clear. The prospective buyer will be
getting in this improved almanac half again as much reading matter as he
once received, but without the commensurate increase in cost. The price is,
in fact, "very little advanc'd" over the five pence which he has been
accustomed to paying.
Without the detailed evidence of any extant shop records to help fix
the retail cost of an individual copy, one is obliged to work with several
statements made by Parker in drawing up the balance sheet of the accounts
of the firm of Franklin and Hall (AFH) early in 1766 on the occasion of the
formal dissolution of the partnership. In entry four among the debits Hall
charged Franklin 62/13/4 for 4000 Poor Richards Improved
sent
to his nephew in Newport over a ten-year period from 1752 to 1761. This
which I take to be the most advantageous wholesale price at which the
almanacs could be purchased amounts to 1/11/4 per 100, or about
3¾d. a copy. In entry forty-one on the credit side Parker
has analyzed the "Account of Almanacks printed and sold by D. Hall from
1752 to 1765" and lists first the "Poor Richards— 141,257 &c.mmat;
4d
(sticking deducted)." This figure of 4d., I assume, was Hall's
average wholesale price for a single copy of the improved almanac
over a fourteen-year period, or 1/13/4 in lots of one hundred. To
counterbalance those copies sold at 3¾
d. a piece to
Franklin
and possibly to the occasional bookseller who made a purchase of several
thousand almanacs in one order, Hall would need to sell other copies at a
higher price. These were in all probability the
Poor Richards
he
sold by the dozen at about 4½
d. per copy to the many
small
shopkeepers in Philadelphia and the surrounding communities.
If one may reason then on the basis of comparative prices asked by
Franklin in the sale of his original Poor Richards and in that
of
his Poor Richards Improved, the figures in tabulated form
would fall like this:
Poor Richards
|
Price per hundred |
|
|
Price per copy |
|
£ |
s
|
d
|
d
|
Wholesale to partners |
1 |
0 |
0 |
2⅖ |
Wholesale |
1 |
5 |
0 |
3 |
Per dozen |
|
|
|
3½ |
Per copy |
|
|
|
5 |
Poor Richards Improved
|
£ |
s
|
d
|
d
|
Wholesale to partners |
1 |
11 |
4 |
3¾ |
Wholesale |
1 |
13 |
4 |
4 |
Per dozen |
|
|
|
4½[*]
|
Per copy |
|
|
|
6[*]
|
And thus the retail price of six pence per copy seems the most reasonable
one which Franklin might ask. It would afford him the same two-penny
differential between the wholesale and retail prices which he had established
for his earlier almanacs, and still fit the description of a sum "very little
advanc'd" over five pence, the price which his readers had got used to
paying for an original
Poor Richard.
Plate No. 1
- 1. Title-page of the first printing of the Poor Richard for
1734 (Yale copy).
- 2. Title-page of the second "edition" of the Poor Richard
for
1734 (American Philosophical Society copy).
- 3. Original salutation to preface of the first printing of PR
1734, A1v (Yale copy).
- 4. Amended salutation to preface of the first printing of PR
1734, A1v (second Yale copy).
- 5. Opening portion of preface to the partially reset second printing
of PR 1734, A1v (American Philosophical
Society
copy).
Plate No. 2
- 1. Title-page of the second printing of the PR 1736,
A1 (American Philosophical Society copy).
- 2. First page of the reset preface to the unique second printing of
the PR 1736, A1v (American Philosophical
Society
copy).
- 3. First page of the preface to the first printing of the PR
1736, A1v (New York Public copy).
Plate No. 3
- 1. Unproofed page of the PR 1738,
B3v
(Huntington copy).
- 2. Corrected page of the PR 1738,
B3v (New
York Public copy). Note in l. 17 "1 23" for "1 21"; in l. 25, "neat" for
"near"; in l. 29, "end" for "eng"; in l. 33, "clouds" for "clounds"; and in
l. 37, "1 15 mo" for "1 13 m."
- 3. Broken top rules on A3v,
B4v, and C3v of one
printing of the PR 1739 (American Philosophical Society
copy).
- 4. Stop-press insertion of errata list on A2 of PR
1745
(New York Public copy; lacking in American Antiquarian Society
copy).
Plate No. 4
- 1. Title-page of early printing of PR 1740
(American
Philosophical Society copy). Note break in letter "d" of "Latitude" and in
letter "y" of "Forty" present also on title-pages of PR 1736
(Plate 2, no. 1), and of PR 1744 (Plate 5, no. 1), indicative
of
the re-use of standing type.
- 2. Correct text on C4 of an early printing of PR
1740
(American Philosophical Society copy).
- 3. Unproofed text of later resetting of C4 in PR
1740
(Huntington copy).
Plate No. 5
- 1. Title-page of PR 1744 intended for sale in the
Provinces of Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey (Yale
copy).
- 2. Title-page of PR 1744 with stop-press imprint
alteration for the use of Jonas Green selling the almanac in the Province of
Maryland (Huntington copy).
- 3. Digest of governors, speakers of the assembly, and Philadelphia
mayors, a feature introduced into the first of the Poor Richards
Improved, 1748, F1v, for the use of almanac
readers in the
Province of Pennsylvania (Yale copy).
Plate No. 6
- 1. Digest of New England court dates in first setting appearing in
the PRI 1748, F1v, for the use of almanac
readers in the
provinces north of the Middle Colonies. It was a substitution for the Digest
of governors, etc. See Plate 5, no. 3 (Boston Public copy).
- 2. Digest of New England court dates in corrected setting inserted
for almanac readers north of the Middle Colonies. It appears in the Boston
Public copy of PRI 1749, F2, and in the Yale, Huntington,
and
New Jersey Historical Society copies of PRI 1751,
F2v
(Boston Public copy).
- 3. The B1 leaf in the first printing of the PRI 1749.
Note that the signature is 1.5 mm. above bottom rule (Library of Congress
copy).
- 4. The B1 leaf of the second printing of the PRI
1749.
Note that the signature is 2.5 mm. above bottom rule (New York Public
copy).
- 5. The C1 leaf of the first printing of the PRI 1749
(Library of Congress copy).
- 6. The C1 leaf of the second printing of the PRI
1749
(New York Public copy).
Plate No. 7
- 1. A portion of the first setting of the preface to the PRI
1749, A2v (Yale copy).
- 2. A portion of the second setting of the preface to the PRI
1749, A2v (New York Public copy).
- 3. Initial form of the digest of dates for the Courts of Assize in
Maryland in the PRI 1749, F1v (Library of
Congress
copy).
- 4. Revised form of the digest of dates for the Maryland Courts in
the second printing of the PRI 1749, F1v
(New York Public
copy).
Plate No. 8
- 1. Uncorrected historical note in first printing of PRI
1749, E2 (Library of Congress copy).
- 2. Corrected historical note in second printing of PRI
1749, E2 (Boston Public copy).
- 3. Pages D1v and D2 transposed in the
PRI 1755
(Boston Public copy).
Notes
[*]
I am indebted to the Research Committees of
Temple University and the American Philosophical Society for grants to
pursue this investigation.
[1]
Benjamin Franklin's Memoirs,
Parallel. Text Edition, ed. Max Farrand (1949), p. 242.
[2]
For this statistical information and that on the
earlier Poor Richards I owe thanks to Miss Dorothy W.
Bridgewater of the Yale University Library.
[3]
Mechanick Exercises on the Whole Art of
Printing, ed. Herbert Davis and Harry Carter (1958), p.
292.
[4]
John Clyde Oswald, Benjamin Franklin
Printer (1926), p. 93.
[6]
Account Books (Ledgers A and B,
1728-1737), ed. George Simpson Eddy (1928); Account
Books
(Ledger D, 1739-1747), ed. G. S. Eddy (1929). Cited hereafter as FAB I
and FAB II respectively.
[7]
Historical Society of Pennsylvania Franklin
Papers: Accounts Franklin-Hall, 1747-1766 (folio sheet bound as separate
volume). Cited hereafter as AFH.
[8]
The Ames almanac carries the price per copy on
the title-page. See Rollo G. Silver, "Publishing in Boston, 1726-1757: The
Accounts of Daniel Henchman," PAAS (1956), pp. 33-36,
where Draper's wholesale price for printing 8000 copies of the Ames
almanac rises from £35 in 1741 to £66 in 1747.