December 19 turns out to be a great day in
publishing history.
On this day in 1732 Benjamin Franklin
published the first edition of Poor Richard's Almanack. He
continued to issue it annually until 1758. It was a highly popular—and
lucrative—undertaking. Nothing else published in the Colonies
rivaled it as a perennial best seller. As many as 10,000 copies a year
were sold. Franklin adopted the persona of Richard Saunders,
supposedly an astrologer and seeker of knowledge. The character was
actually a satire on popular English almanac publishers.
Eventually Saunders, who was distinct from Franklin, faded and was replaced by
Poor Richard, understood to be Franklin. Under the latter guise the pithy
axioms, aphorisms, and proverbs for which the Almanack is still
remembered, became a staple of the book. There were also weather
forecasts, tide charts, planting guides, horoscopes, odd bits of scientific and
historic information, and humorous stories and poems. The Almanack encouraged
many imitators and the format became a staple of American publishing.
After Franklin retired from active business and suspended the Almanack, it
became common for other books to claim some relationship to Franklin. Most
famously the Old Farmer’s Almanac, first published in 1792,
claims a connection to Franklin and a portrait appears annually on its
cover.
44 years after Franklin’s first edition, Thomas
Paine published his first pamphlet in what became a series of screeds
collectively known as The American Crisis. The first essay
opened with lines that became famous—“These are the times that try men’s
souls.” Thirteen pamphlets were published between 1776-1777 with three
additional volumes released between 1777 and 1783. They were an important
political statement, a bolster to morale in the darkest days of the American
Revolution, and a forthright assertion of Paine’s fervent Deism.
The first pamphlet was admired by General George Washington, who had it
read to the Continental Army on December 23, 1776, three days before the
Battle of Trenton, and by both Thomas Jefferson and John
Adams. Later Paine’s Deism, expounded further in The Age of
Reason, earned him the enmity of preachers and the religiously
orthodox. His ardent support of the French Revolution turned Adams
and other conservatives further against him. After he was arrested and in
France, Washington, by then President, refused for domestic political
reasons to intercede in his behalf. Despite all of his contributions to
American independence, after finally returning to the United States, he
eventually died virtually alone and penniless in 1809.
The final publishing event took place across the Atlantic
on December 19, 1843. On that date A Christmas Carol by
Charles Dickens was published in London by Chapman & Hall.
Dickens was just 31 years old and already one of the most popular writers in England
when the novella came out. Written in a little over a month
and a half and the manuscript completed just days before publication, the book
was an immediate success, going through seven printings by the following
May. It also achieved critical acclaim. It has become a classic and
the inspiration of many stage and screen adaptations, as well as numerous
re-tellings in various settings and time periods. Dickens’s, at the time
attending Unitarian worship, crafted a Christmas story with no mention
of Jesus or the nativity. Instead it was an entirely secular salute to
the old English popular holiday re-cast as a morality tale. The enduring
themes of the capacity to redeem oneself by good deeds and charity continue to
strike a note with modern readers.
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