On December 19, 1801, Carey sent a broadside to printers and booksellers throughout the United States, proposing a literary fair in New York City in June 1802, modeled on the literary fairs of Leipzig and Frankfurt. His proposal was a patriotic call to improve the quality of American book manufacturing and distribution.

All American publishers faced stiff completion from books imported from Britain, which were often cheaper and of better quality. The fair would promote the exchange and distribution of American books, allowing publishers to carry a wider range of titles.[1]

The fair served two other purposes. It promoted discussion about protective measures for native manufacturers. It also encouraged improvement in the quality of paper, type, illustrations and bindings to make American books competitive with British editions.

Using the rhetoric of nationalism and the lure of novelty, he persuaded printers and booksellers to attend the fair. He organized it in New York City, instead of Philadelphia, to penetrate the burgeoning markets of New York City and New York State.

New York City’s location was critical to the fair’s success and Carey’s strategy. In his announcement, he noted that New York was centrally located for the trade.[2] In 1800, New York, Philadelphia and the region around Boston were the three major publishing centers.[3] New York’s location made it easily accessible from Philadelphia and New England, ensuring high attendance at the fair. He located the fair at the Old Coffee House in the heart of New York City’s bookselling district, making it convenient for his target market of publishers to attend, so that he could introduce his Bibles and books there efficiently.[4] The fair was a simple and effective solution to bring his publications to market throughout New York and the nation.

Booksellers throughout the United States flocked to the fair at the Old Coffee House on June 1, 1802.[5] Ebenezer Andrews reported to Isaiah Thomas that it was, he believed, “…the first time that 50 booksellers ever dined together in America…”[6] Sixteen booksellers from New York City and one from Albany attended the fair.[7] The tradesmen organized into The American Company of Booksellers. Mathew Carey wrote the organization’s constitution, becoming its secretary. The booksellers elected the respected Hugh Gaine who, as president, addressed the newly formed organization.[8]

At the fair, Carey set up his eight-year-old son Henry with some books to sell with an account of his own.[9]   Henry became one of the fair’s attractions as “the bookseller in miniature” when he demonstrated an astonishing knowledge of the book trade.[10]

At the fair, Carey’s 1801 edition of the quarto family Bible featured a map and nine illustrations; his 1802 edition had six maps and twenty-four prints. In comparison, the Bible offered by the New York consortium had no maps or illustrations. Some copies were printed on coarse paper. Carey’s illustrated quartos offered economical alternatives to Durell’s folio. Carey’s school Bible, purchased from Hugh Gaine, faced stiffer competition from Thomas and Andrews’s high-quality school Bible.

Since April 1802, Carey had been negotiating behind the scenes with Thomas’ partner, Ebenezer Andrews, to determine who would lay claim to school Bible sales in New York State. Andrews wanted to sell his Bibles in New England, New York and New Jersey, leaving Pennsylvania and the South to Carey.[11] Negotiations continued at the fair. Carey wanted a presence in the two New York markets, and he gave up Baltimore to get it. They finally compromised later that month, declaring New York and Baltimore to be neutral ground.[12]

The literary fair enabled Carey to improve his distribution of Bibles and books throughout New York and the nation from the sales and exchange arrangements he negotiated with the other booksellers. His credit was assured when he received his seat on the Bank of Pennsylvania board. With the capital for expansion, and an improved distribution network, Carey gained a foothold in the markets of New York City and State. He became the foremost Bible and book publisher in the United States in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. In 1803, he kept the quarto family Bible in standing type, eliminating the expense of proofreading and typesetting. During that period, he published more than 60 editions of his family and school Bibles and two more editions of the Douay.[13]   Carey mass-produced his Bibles and distributed them nationally. As time went on, he offered Bibles with many features in a wider range of sizes deeply penetrating the national market.[14]

Carey succeeded in becoming the nation’s foremost publisher of Bibles in the first quarter of the nineteenth century for several reasons. He had a reliable line of credit and the best distribution network of any publisher in the country. He differentiated the features of his Bibles better than any other publisher in the United States, offering many choices to fit the purchaser’s budget. Hugh Gaine and Isaiah Thomas were older, and on the verge of retirement. Both were withdrawing from the business. In 1802, Carey was just beginning to hit his stride as a publisher.   By 1803, he had purchased the type to keep his quarto Bible in standing type.

Carey excelled at publicizing his books, and managed to edge ahead of his competitors, who imitated him. He often was the first to innovate, and did it so well that despite the efforts of his imitators, he continued to surpass them.[15]

The literary fairs continued successfully for several years, meeting in Philadelphia and New York, and once in Newark, New Jersey.[16]   In 1806, the fairs ended after printers from rural areas flooded the fairs with cheap, low-quality editions of titles that publishers from large cities also manufactured.[17]

CAREY THE NATIONALIST | Malcontents, Quids and Clodhoppers

[1] William Charvat, Literary Publishing in America 1790-1850, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1959) 47.

[2] [ Carey] “Address to the Printers and Booksellers throughout the United States,” [ 1801] Lea and Febiger Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

[3] Between 1797 and 1802, Isaiah Thomas remained as the publishing powerhouse, generating 140 imprints, exclusive of Bibles, from his Worcester facility alone, with 117, exclusive of Bibles, that he published with Ebenezer T. Andrews. Because of this prodigious output, the Boston-Worcester area was the largest publishing center in the United States. In New York City, from 1797-1802, Hugh Gaine, who had been New York’s most prominent publisher, issued less than 50 imprints exclusive of the Bible. From 1797 to 1802, Carey issued 114 imprints, exclusive of the Bible. Both Thomas and Gaine began to withdraw from the trade after 1802. Over the next 23 years, when Carey dominated the field, and other Philadelphia publishers also issued many imprints, Philadelphia surpassed Boston as the largest publishing center in the United States. From 1797 to 1802, the three publishers in New York City with the largest number of imprints, exclusive of the Bible, were T. & J. Swords with 95 imprints, William Durell with 80 and Isaac Collins with 61. Statistics compiled from Early American Imprints, Series I: Evans, 1639-1800 Digital Edition and Early American Imprints, Series II: Shaw-Shoemaker, 1801-1819, Digital Edition.

[4] Sixteen of New York’s 24 bookselling firms were recorded as present at the fair. See “Literary Fair,” [New York] The Daily Advertiser, June 2, 1802.

[5] The fair took place at Bardin’s Long Room in the “Old Coffee House.” See “Literary Fair,” [New York] The Daily Advertiser, June 1, 1802. The coffee house was on Beaver Street. See A[dolf] Growoll, Book Trade Bibliography in the United States in the XIXth Century, (New York: Printed for the Dibdin Club, 1898) iii. While no such formal name applied to a coffee house in the vicinity at that time, the geographical description accords with the Merchant’s Coffee House, established in 1740, diagonally across the intersection from Tontine’s Coffee House, founded in 1793.

[6] Ebenezer Andrews to Isaiah Thomas, 4 June 1802. Papers of Isaiah Thomas, American Antiquarian Society.

[7] The Daily Advertiser reported that the following printers and booksellers attended: Charles Peirce, from Portsmouth, New Hampshire; Joseph Bumstead from Boston; John H. Babcock from Harford; Samuel Trumbull from Stonington, Connecticut; Isaac Beers and Co. from New Haven; Whiting, Leavenworth and Whiting from Albany; Hugh Gaine, Isaac Collins and Son, Samuel Campbell, Brown and Stansbury, G. F. Hopkins, William Falconer, T. and J. Swords, Evert Duykinck, David Longworth, Peter A. Mesier, T. B. Jansen and Co., T .S. Arden, William Durell, E. M. Boyle, Napthali Judah and James Oram from New York; Patrick Byrne, William Duane, S. F. Bradford, W. Bradford, Mathew Carey, Abraham Small, William Birch, Jacob Johnson and John Bioren from Philadelphia; Warner and Hanna, and Bonsall and Niles from Baltimore and William Pritchard from Richmond. See “Literary Fair,” [New York] The Daily Advertiser, June 2, 1802.   Ebenezer Andrews did not arrive until the following day, and was not reported as having attended. Andrews reported to Thomas that bookseller Shepard Kollock was also there. See Ebenezer Andrews to Isaiah Thomas, 4 June 1802. Papers of Isaiah Thomas, American Antiquarian Society. As a prominent New England publisher, Isaiah Thomas was conspicuous by his absence, but approved of the idea of the fair. See Isaiah Thomas to Mathew Carey, 10 February 1802. Lea and Febiger Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

[8] [Hugh Gaine] An Oration Delivered Before the Booksellers Convened in New York, at the First Literary Fair, June 4, 1802 [New York, 1802] Edward Carey Gardiner Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania. See also [Carey et al.] To the Booksellers of the United States (New York: s.n., June 2, 1802) American Antiquarian Society.

[9] David Kaser, Messrs. Carey & Lea of Philadelphia: A Study in the History of the Booktrade, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1957) 18.

[10] Henry Charles Carey, “Reminiscences of a Bookseller,” American Publishers’ Circular and Literary Gazette (Series 3, V. 1, N. 3, (June 1, 1863) 130.

[11] Thomas and Andrews to Mathew Carey, 26 April 1802, Lea and Febiger Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

[12] Ebenezer T. Andrews to Mathew Carey, 27 June 1802. Lea and Febiger Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

[13] Hills, The English Bible in America, 5, 15, 22.

[14] Gutjahr, An American Bible, 29.

[15] John Tebbel, A History of Book Publishing in the United States, Volume I: The Creation of an Industry 1630-1865 (New York: R.R. Bowker, 1972),112.

[16] A[dolph] Growoll, Book Trade Bibliography in the United States in the XIXth Century (New York: Printed for the Dibdin Club, 1898) iv.

[17] Mathew Carey, Autobiography, (Brooklyn: Research Classics, 1942) 50. See also James N. Green, “The Rise of Book Publishing in the United States,” in A History of the Book in America, Volume 2 An Extensive Republic: Print, Culture, and Society in the New Nation, 1790-1840, eds. Robert A. Gross and Mary Kelley (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press and American Antiquarian Society, 2010) 23. Green offers an explanation of the financial arrangements between booksellers at the fair.