On February 1, 1793, France declared war on Great Britain. As that war raged on, Carey was ebullient about the future of his publishing business. Amidst the political difficulties the war caused for the United States, Carey saw an economic opportunity. He decided to publish two lavishly illustrated books of American manufacture competing with British imports.
In 1794, he published William Guthrie’s A New System of Modern Geography with fifty large maps and charts, and the following year Oliver Goldsmith’s A History of the Earth and Animated Nature, with fifty-five plates. Both had large runs: 2,500 copies Guthrie’s Geography and 3,000 copies of Goldsmith’s History.
Using Britain’s war with France as an excuse, he withheld payments to his British suppliers incurring large debts to finance his ambitious publications. He continued to pay his Irish booksellers. [1] This was one of the few instances when he did not honor his debts.
“I wish with all my heart that your removal [to the United States] may turn out to your satisfaction…the only thing that will ever operate against you is your grasping at things that I am afraid you cannot accomplish. You should be careful how you act.” [2]
Dublin Bookseller Thomas Reynolds to Carey
With the two large outlays of capital for the Geography and History Carey aggressively marketed his books through the distribution network he had established for the American Museum. He traveled to broaden his contacts, sell his books and widen his network. He made exchanges with booksellers in other cities and offered subscriptions for titles he already had in stock. He hired David Clark to sell Goldsmith’s History, in the frontier of western Virginia.[3]
TRANSITION TO PUBLISHER | Carey Engaged Weems To Sell His Books
[1] James N. Green, “The Rise of Book Publishing,” in A History of the Book in America, Volume 2, An Extensive Republic: Print, Culture, and Society in the New Nation 1790-1840, Robert A. Gross and Mary Kelley, eds. (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press and American Antiquarian Society, 2010) 85.
[2] Thomas Reynolds to Mathew Carey, 27 August 1788, Lea & Febiger Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania quoted in Edward C. Carter II, The Political Activities of Mathew Carey, Nationalist, 1760-1814, Bryn Mawr College PhD. Dissertation, 1962, 48.
[3] James N. Green, “From Printer to Publisher: Mathew Carey and the Origins of Nineteenth-Century Book Publishing,” in Getting the Books Out: Papers of the Chicago Conference on the Book in 19th Century America, ed. Michael Hackenberg, (Washington, DC: Center for the Book, Library of Congress, 1987) 31.