The Worcester Magazine. [An uninterrupted run of nine issues from April to June of 1786.]

Worcester, Mass: Printed by I. Thomas, by whom subscriptions, essays, &c. &c. for this work are taken in, 1786. 8vo., 19th century three quarter red morocco with marbled paper boards. 110 pp., 30 pp. of ads extracted from the rear of each issue. The first nine issues of this continuation in magazine form of Isaiah Thomas' newspaper The Massachusetts Spy, a format to which Thomas resorted as a means of avoiding recently instituted tariffs on paper and taxes on newspaper advertisements.

In a broadside he published addressing the matter Thomas observed "The tax on news-paper advertisements has a direct tendency not only to restrain, but (truncated) to destroy those necessary vehicles of publick information, by taking away their only support...these considerations have induced the printer of the Massachusetts Spy, although with greatest reluctance, to discontinue the publication of that news-paper..." The scope and nature of its content remained essentially unchanged in its new form.

The present issues include such items as the text of a November 1785 treaty with the Cherokees, the speech of a Seneca chief delivered at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, an article on the growing Russian Empire, extracts from History of the Late War in America (from the British Annual Register, for 1776) and Dr. Johnson's Meditations on Pudding. Also includes numerous interesting advertisements, some of them illustrated with woodcuts. A partially trimmed early ownership inscription appears at the foot of one leaf, apparently reading "Doctr. Porter." A short-lived title, The Worcester Magazine was published from 1786 to 1788.

REFERENCES: Lomazow 20.

CONDITION: Most issues good, issue for 2nd week in May, 1786 lacking leaf (pp. 71-72), rubbed along the extremities and spine with some loss, marginal losses from a few leaves, in one instance affecting the text of an advertisement for "Stages From Portsmouth in New Hampshire, to Savannah in Georgia" (but this ad appears several times). (Inventory #: 2968)