The Origins of a Free Press in Prerevolutionary ... - Web Publishing

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While designed to be useful and entertaining, almanacs also were an
inexpensive way of introducing plain folks to the world of letters: “ ‘almanacks,’
selling for a few pennies, found their way into practically every household” even
those of the poor and illiterate. 17 The price in Virginia and Maryland of seven-and-
a-half pence to “Eight Coppers” each was low enough that virtually every family of
European descent could afford an almanac. Historian Susan Stromei Berg
suggested that in eighteenth-century Virginia, “Everyone had to have one.” 18 The
records of the Williamsburg printers allow us to estimate the number of almanacs
that were sold and paid for in 1751 at between 2,000 and 3,400, and in 1764,
between 3,000 and 5,000 copies. 19 Other estimates run as high as 5,000 issues
printed each year for a Virginia population of about 130,000 of European descent,
or about one almanac for every 26 white people. 20 All of these estimates ignore the
fact that most local almanacs were aimed at a wider audience than just one colony.
For example, the later Virginia almanacs indicated on the front cover, “Fitting
17 Schlesinger, Prelude to Independence, 41.
18 “Eight Coppers” from The Maryland Almanack … 1762 (Annapolis: William Parks, 1761).
Many advertisements in the newspapers, including the Virginia Gazette (Williamsburg: Hunter,
Jan. 2, 1756), 4, or Bear, Checklist of Virginia Almanacs, x, listed seven and a half pence as the price.
“Everyone” quotation from Berg, Eighteenth Century Williamsburg Press, 32-34.
19 The price listed in Virginia Gazette, (Hunter, Jan. 30, 1752), 4, advertisement states the
Virginia Almanack price at 7½ pennies retail, 5 shillings per dozen wholesale (or 5 pennies each),
Hunter, Printing Office Journal, lists total almanac sales for 1751 at £70.6.6½. See also, Berg,
Eighteenth Century Williamsburg Press, 32-34. Royle and Purdie, Printing Office Journal, vol. 2,
1764-1766, lists £75 credit only almanac sales for 1764. Stiverson, in “Colonial Retail Book
Trade,” in Joyce, Printing and Society in Early America, 157-9, estimated that if the ratio of credit
to cash sales were constant, about 5,000 almanacs were printed in 1764 and 1765. Constant
newspaper ads requesting payment indicated the printers were often not paid for their work, so
actual distribution is likely much higher, when almanacs not paid for are included.
20 Berg, Eighteenth Century Williamsburg Press, 32-34. Stiverson, “Colonial Book Trade,” 59-
74. Population estimates from Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970,
2:1168. Numbers derived from British colonial office records. The use of “white” population only
is necessitated by the population estimates of the time, which did not often include Native
Americans or slaves. There is no indication that the black population of Virginia, primarily slave,
had any substantial literacy rate by this period.