As we shall see, the work of Newbery and Goldsmith filled well-nigh as large a space in the literature of New England as in that of the mother country. With the keen business acumen which characterized our second greatest New England printer, he at once seized upon every product of the Newbery Press and openly and frankly reprinted every one as fast as it appeared in England. By this means he kept his numerous establishments- in different parts of the colony busy, while some of them at least would otherwise have been idle, during his voluntary suspension of “The Spy.” The books were described as the Massachusetts editions. This may have been done to distinguish them from the original English editions, or to distinguish them from among other reprints which might have been made. Thomas transcribed bodily the quaint and original announcements made by Newbery in the London newspapers, and used them to herald his reprints. He has often been commended for the ingenuity displayed in these advertisements; but in this the praise has been given to the plagiarist and not to the originator.

Nor was Thomas alone in this good work. T. C. Cushing of Salem, Patten, and Babcock of Hartford, Thomas Fleet, Cox and Barry, Fowle and Draper, John Boyle, Folsom, John Mein and Mein and Fleeming of Boston (a copy of whose reprint of Newbery’s famous little “Thumb” Bible is in the Boston public library) and many others contributed by their reprints to make Newbery’s little books popular in New England.

A very careful scrutiny of the books of account kept by John Newbery and Benjamin Collins of Salisbury, with whom Newbery was associated in many of his enterprises fails to reveal a single record of money placed to the credit of any of the publications by way of payment for “advance sheets” or in “courtesy recognition“ of authors’ rights. It is only fair to assume, therefore, that these early New England reprinters “prenaient leer biers oic ils le trouvaient,” as so many others have since done, and that they had not that fine sense of moral obligation which has always so honorably distinguished our nineteenth century Boston publishers in pre-international copyright days.

A very few lines must suffice for a glance at the career of John Newbery. He was born in 1713, the son of a small farmer in Berkshire. He received but a very limited education in his youth, which he improved by his own efforts in after life. In 1730 he went to Reading, where he was employed by John Carman, a printer; and when the latter died, he made Newbery one of his executors. Not long after, Newbery married his former master’s widow. In 1744 he went to London, and opened a shop. Later he removed to Saint Paul’s Churchyard and gave his house the sign of “The Bible and Sun,” according to the fashion in those days before house numbering came into vogue. He was no sooner settled here than he began to publish books of all kinds. Christopher Smart and Dr. Johnson were among the earliest contributors to his rapidly growing catalogue. Through Johnson he became acquainted with Goldsmith and all the famous people of his time. Goldsmith soon became his editorial factotum,—translating, compiling, editing, composing title-pages, and writing introductions innumerable. Newbery’s, activity was unlimited; he joined to his bookselling the vending of patent medicines,