University of Virginia Library

Publisher

Interspersed among the items printed by Dickinson are those which he published as well as printed and those which he compiled, printed, and published. The former group ranges in subject from Rev. Francis Parkman's An Offering of Sympathy (1830) to the first edition of The Pirates Own Book (1837), afterwards frequently republished by others. The latter group includes four projects which deserve greater attention.

Dickinson opened his printing office at a time when Americans increasingly favored the expansion of public improvements. Canals, railroads, and steamboats, all recently developed, promised a radical transformation of the economic order which seemed limitless. Only one successful American channel for communication about this euphoric subject existed. At Philadelphia, the American Mechanics' Magazine, later the Journal of the Franklin Institute, began publication in 1825. Undoubtedly Dickinson realized that if a similar magazine on industrial research and development were established in Boston, it would enhance the reputation of his role as printer-publisher. At first he thought of republishing the London Mechanics' Magazine, but decided against it because of "the amount of matter in that periodical of a purely local character, and the speculations therein contained, which are so constantly anticipated by the ingenuity, talent and enterprize of our own countrymen."[51] Instead, within a few months after opening his printing office, he published the first number of the Mechanicks Magazine, and Journal of Publick Internal Improvement on 1 February 1830.

The Mechanicks Magazine was addressed "to the man of science, to the man of practical knowledge, and to all who are disposed to advance the Useful Arts, and the cause of Publick Internal Improvement" and articles of "a political, religious, or other publick controversy" would be rigorously excluded (Mec. Mag., p. 1). By printing relevant domestic contributions and by reprinting articles from foreign journals, Dickinson hoped to "spread a table upon which genius may lay her crude productions, and where timidity may venture to disclose her worth" (Mec. Mag., p. 1). He hoped, too, that the "pages may one day be used as a book of reference, whereby may be exhibited, on comparison with the then

existing publications, the various advances in the Useful Arts, and the Improvements made in our country" (Mec. Mag., p. 1). Each monthly issue of thirty-two pages, royal octavo, was on paper selected with regard "to the permanency of the work" and "the typographical execution shall be a specimen of the perfection to which the art (in which the Publisher feels it his pride to have been educated) has attained" (Mec. Mag., p. 2).

During the year, this well-produced journal contained more than four hundred and forty articles of various lengths. In addition to the expected articles on railroads, canals, and steamboats, others were concerned with cloth, clocks, chemistry, physics, patents, and anything else that one could expect to find in a scientific journal of the time. At the end of the year, the publisher provided a comprehensive table of contents and a title page on which the title appeared as The Mechanics' Magazine, and Journal of Public Internal Improvement—omitting the k in "Mechanic" and "Public" in respect, no doubt, to the modernization of spelling. When the first volume was completed, Dickinson advertised that publication was suspended until April when it would be resumed if sufficient encouragement was obtained (Daily Advertiser, 25 Feb. 1831). The encouragement must have been inadequate because no succeeding volume has been located. If the climate had been less parochial, the magazine might have found more readers, and would now be the "book of reference" Dickinson anticipated.

Four years later, Dickinson had greater success with a reference book by compiling, printing, and publishing A Help to Printers and Publishers. As previously mentioned, printers for many years found it indispensable. The tables it contained were as useful to printers as interest tables to bankers. To save time in estimating jobs, Dickinson had calculated the quantity of paper required for a given number of signatures and provided the number of tokens in the amount. A printer could refer to the tables and immediately find the amount of paper and tokens required for a given number of copies and a given number of signatures. For instance, 1,000 copies of a book of 35 signatures would require 735 quires which were 70 tokens. Or 100,000 copies of a four-signature almanac would require 8,400 quires which were 800 tokens. For small quantities, the number of quires and sheets were given. All of the calculations were based on half-sheet work, "this being the most common manner of doing press work."[52] For sheet work, the number of signatures would be doubled when using the tables. With this book of more than two hundred tables at hand, printers could rapidly estimate book, newspaper, and job work. Dickinson received much praise and appreciation

for publishing these calculations. At the first exhibition of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association, he was awarded a diploma for this "original work of immense labor, well executed, and of great convenience and importance to the trade, for which the author is entitled to high commendation."[53]

Dickinson's reservoir of energy was still unexhausted. Within a year after finishing work on A Help to Printers and Publishers, he embarked on a publishing project which continued long beyond his own life. He started modestly by compiling, printing and publishing a Boston almanac for 1836. Its eighty-four pages began with a one-sentence preface: "If it be found that the present number of the Boston Almanac suit the public taste, it will be published yearly, about the 10th of the first month."[54] In the preface to the 1837 edition, he expressed satisfaction with the response and remarked about the principles of inclusion: "The reception of the first number of the Boston Almanac in town and country has encouraged the publisher to persevere. In the present number he has not striven to give a great variety of matter, but rather to present what is of greatest local importance."[55] Directed at a specific readership, Dickinson's almanac, as the years passed, was considered "the favorite year-book of Boston" (Daily Chronotype, 19 Dec. 1848). For improved distribution, the 1837 and succeeding issues were published in December rather than January (1837 Boston Almanac, p. 71). Success soon became burdensome. The work of compilation and printing demanded much of the time of a busy man and problems of distribution were less to his taste. Beginning with the 1839 issue, other firms published it, but Dickinson prepared the text and printed it:

Scattered among the advertising pages of these almanacs was much information about Dickinson's business activities (a picture of his printing office, announcements of new equipment, specimens of type) and, on one occasion, he used text space for a description of his printing office.[57] Examples of his fancy trade cards were pasted on the end-papers.

The printing order for the 1849 Boston Almanac was 40,000 copies.[58] Dickinson's affection for the annual was so intense that he did not cease work while he was dying. He still, as he said in the 1849 preface, tried to improve it:

This was the last almanac he compiled. According to the Daily Chronotype, "He indeed took special pains with the last number, and had just finished it, with all his accustomed accuracy, when he died" (Daily Chronotype, 19 Dec. 1848). His creation survived him; the Boston Almanac was published until 1894 and then continued under other titles until 1926.

Information about one of Dickinson's most interesting publications is only available in contemporary newspaper accounts—a circumstance which is especially regrettable because the Typographic Advertiser was the first typographical periodical in the United States. In the first number, November, 1845, Dickinson stated the objective: "the general diffusion among printers of such specimens of type and material pertaining to the printing business, as we now manufacture and have for sale, and of such as may hereafter be perfected, as we advance in our business of type founding."[60] The periodical was "a beautifully printed sheet," on which "different varieties of type are so displayed . . . as to afford a correct specimen of their style" (Daily Evening Traveller, 18 Nov. 1845). The second number, c. June, 1846, principally devoted to newspaper type,

received similar praise: "the specimens exhibited are beautiful in the extreme" (Boston Daily Atlas, 11 June 1846). The third number, c. August, 1846, showed "what a well directed genius can accomplish" (Boston Recorder, 13 June 1846). Little else is known about the Typographic Advertiser. Perhaps, in some attic or library stack, a file will eventually be found.

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Joseph T. Buckingham summed up his wonderment at Dickinson: "Mr. Dickinson acquired an extended reputation by a perseverance and devotion to his calling, almost unparalleled, and which brought on consumption and premature death."[61] The Daily Evening Traveller's obituary praised Dickinson as "one of the most enterprising and efficient conductors and improvers of the art of printing" and referred to his "indomitable energy, industry and perseverance" (18 Dec. 1848). The Daily Chronotype said that he "gave himself no respite, not from a passion for amassing, but from his conscientious impulse to do everything well" (19 Dec. 1848). Constant pursuit of excellence drained him physically and financially. At death, the man who had once employed a hundred hands left an estate of $975.68.[62]