Online Bibliography and Global Guide to Handwritten Publications
June 20, 2011
1878, Alphabetical Order, E, Massachusetts, Uncategorized, United States Leave a comment
Publication History:
Place of Publication: Massachusetts?
Frequency: Unknown
Volume and Issue Data: 1878, Vol. l, Nos. 4-12 (28 pp.)
Size and Format: Unknown
Editor/Publisher: Unknown
Title Changes and Continuation: Unknown
General Description and Notes:
None
Information Sources:
Bibliography: None
Locations: College Archives and Special Collections, Amherst College, Amherst, MA
June 20, 2011
1857, Alphabetical Order, C, Massachusetts, Organization Newspapers, United States, Youth Papers Leave a comment
Publication History:
Place of Publication: Boylston, Massachusetts
Frequency: Unknown
Volume and Issue Data: 1857
Size and Format: Unknown
Editor/Publisher: Unknown
Title Changes and Continuation: Unknown
General Description and Notes:
Amateur Newspaper, written with pen or pencil.
Information Sources:
Bibliography: None
Link: The American Antiquarian Society, Amateur Newspapers Collection
Locations: American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, MA
June 20, 2011
1700, Alphabetical Order, B, Colonial Papers, Images, Massachusetts, United States 1 Comment
Publication History:
Place of Publication: Boston, Massachusetts
Frequency: Weekly
Volume and Issue Data: 1700-1704; after 1704, the paper was printed
Size and Format: Approximately 6.25 x 10.5 inches
Editor/Publisher: John Campbell, Boston postmaster
Title Changes and Continuation: Boston News-Letter (printed edition beginning 1704)
Boston News-Letter (printed edition, 1704)
General Description & Notes:
The Boston News-Letter is generally regarded as the first “successful” newspaper in the American colonies. From 1704 to 1722, the last date being three years after he retired as postmaster, editor John Campbell produced a printed newsletter. However, for the first four years of the News-Letters’ existence, it was published in handwritten form.
Benjamin Harris’s Publick Occurrences preceded the News-Letter by at least 10 years, but Day’s paper lasted only one issue and was shut down by authorities. As the Campbell’s first printed issue of the News-Letter boldly states, the paper was “Published by Authority.”
Postmaster Campbell used his postal role as to gather information which he published “in the form of a newsletter–the primitive, handwritten report that had been the common medium of communication in Europe before the invention of printing. Most of the information sent out by Campbell was concerned with commercial and governmental matters.”
According to one historian, “There was such a demand for his news letter that Campbell began to look around for some way of relieving the pressure upon his time and energy. He got his brother, Duncan, to help, but even together they could not supply the demand for news. The just couldn’t write longhand fast enough.”
The first printed edition, replacing the handwritten version, appeared on April 24, 1704. “It was called the Boston News-Letter, an appropriate title, since it was merely a continuation of the publication the Campbells had been producing since 1700.”
Boston News-Letter (Boston, Mass.), 18-25 November 1706, p. 4
Information Sources:
Bibliography: Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, First Series, March 1867, Volume 9, pp. 485-501 (Nine issues of the News-Letter from 1703 are presented in this collection); Frank Luther Mott, American Journalism: A History of Newspapers in the United States Through 250 Years (New York, 1941); Willard G. Bleyer, Main Currents in the History of American Journalism (New York, 1973); Edwin Emery and Michael Emery, The Press and America, Fifth ed. (Englewood Cliffs, 1984); Wm. David Sloan and Julie Hedgepath Williams, The Early American Press, 1690-1783 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994), p. 18; Wm. David Sloan, “John Campbell and the Boston News-Letter,” AEJMC website (2004); Tom Kemp, “A Mystery from the First Handwritten Newspaper in America,” http://blog.genealogybank.com/a-mystery-from-the-first-handwritten-newspaper-published-in-america.html, posted Nov. 20, 2012, accessed Feb. 7, 2013.
Locations: American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, MA; State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison, WI
June 20, 2011
1849, Alphabetical Order, B, California Gold Rush Papers, Massachusetts, Shipboard Papers, United States Leave a comment
Publication History:
Place of Publication: Shipboard Edward Everett (1849)
Frequency: Weekly, every Saturday
Volume and Issue Data: The Edward Everett departed Boston Jan. 13, 1849
Size and Format: Four pages, handwritten
Editor/Publisher: “A board of five editors was responsible for the journal” (Lewis); members of the Boston and California Joint Mining and Trading Company en route to the California gold fields
Title Changes and Continuation: None
General Description & Notes:
According to Lewis, the first organized contingent to leave Boston for the California gold fields was the Boston and California Joint Mining and Trading Company. The group sailed from Boston aboard the Edward Everett, a 700-ton “fast-ship,” on January 13, 1849. The company of 150 men, included eight sea captains, four doctors, a clergyman, a mineralogist, a geologist, merchants, manufacturers, farmers, artisans and medical and divinity students.
The Edward Everett was a relatively new ship (approximately six years old) and well equipped. The bunks below deck were named after Boston localities. To combat boredom at sea, numerous regularly scheduled activities were organized, including a musical band, a weekly newspaper, Sunday and mid-week church services, and lectures.
The ship’s newspaper Barometer was intended to circulate the ship’s news among the passengers and the crew, and to publish “original contributions in prose and verse.” Lewis calls the Barometer, “probably the earliest of the gold-ship ‘newspapers'” (p. 89). According to Lewis, the Barometer was
a four-page hand-written sheet issued every Saturday during the voyage of the Edward Everett. A board of five editors was responsible for the journal, the columns of which were filled with daily happenings on the ship, together with a record of her position and speed, and a leavening of lighter fare in the form of “original prose and poetical matter.”
Lewis notes that this and other shipboard newspapers (see, e.g., EMIGRANT, THE PETREL, and SHARK) “lacked the formality of print but more nearly approached conventional journalism” than the various travel journals and diaries kept during the voyages.
Information Sources:
Bibliography: Oscar Lewis, Sea Routes to the Gold Fields: The Migration by Water to California in 1849-1852 (New York: A.A. Knopf, 1949), pp. 89-92; Roy Atwood, “Shipboard News: Nineteenth Century Handwritten Periodicals at Sea,” Paper Presentation to the History Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Annual Convention, Chicago, IL, 1997.
Locations: Bancroft Library, CA?
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June 20, 2011
1874, A, Alphabetical Order, Children Papers, Massachusetts, United States Leave a comment
Publication History:
Place of Publication: Amherst, Massachusetts
Frequency: Unknown
Volume and Issue Data: 1874, Vol. 1, nos. 1,2,3 (12 pp.)
Size and Format: Unknown
Editor/Publisher: Unknown
Title Changes and Continuation: Unknown
General Description and Notes:
Children’s Paper.
Information Sources:
Bibliography: None
Locations: Bliss family Papers, Box 2, folder 30, Amherst College Library Archives (see
http://asteria.fivecolleges.edu/findaids/amherst/ma21_list.html),
Amherst, MA
June 20, 2011
1874, A, Alphabetical Order, Massachusetts, Organization Newspapers, United States Leave a comment
Publication History:
Place of Publication: New England (likely Massachusetts)
Frequency: Unknown
Volume and Issue Data: Unknown
Size and Format: Size unknown, this may be letterpress with some handwritten corrections or addenda
Editor/Publisher: John Green Oliver (? – Letter calls the Amateur Gazette “his letterpress”)
Title Changes and Continuation: Unknown (possibly The Monthly Meteor)
General Description and Notes:
Letterpress compiled in a scrapbook by John Green Oliver of Worcester, MA, from 1874 to 1882, including newspapers of other members of the New England Amateur Journalists’ Association and assorted ephemera and memorabilia of his press activities, all in meticulous emulation of professional job printing and the fraternal culture thereof.
One of the newspapers in this collection, according to Sarah M. Black, Smith College Rare Book Room assistant (as of 1993), is Vol. 1, No. 1 of The Monthly Meteor, Dec. 1881 (28 pp.), including wrappers, which is “printed by hectography with holograph touch-ups and is thus partially handwritten and certainly a hand-made facsimile of a manuscript original.”
Information Sources:
Bibliography: None
Locations: Rare Book Room, William Allan Neilson Library, Smith College, Northampton, MA
June 20, 2011
1831, A, Alphabetical Order, Massachusetts, School Newspapers, United States Leave a comment
Publication History:
Place of Publication: Amherst College, Amherst Massachusetts
Frequency: Unknown
Volume and Issue Data: 1831 vol. 1, no.4
Size and Format: 2 pages
Editor/Publisher: Unknown
Title Changes and Continuation: Unknown
General Description and Notes:
Student paper.
Information Sources:
Bibliography: None
Locations: Amherst College Library Archives, Special Collections, Amherst College, Amherst, MA.
Gazette-Extr., Philadelphia, 1846; attributed to Herman Melville; courtesy of Prof. Roger Stritmatter, Dept. of Humanities, Coppin State University, Baltimore, MD, USA
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