Browse Items (116 total)

The American account of the events at Lexington and Concord is recounted in this dramatic broadside. Note the heavy black borders and the coffins that adorn the top of the broadside. Both the graphics and the inflammatory prose are designed to incite…

This book, commissioned by the new Provincial Congress, was one of the first items printed in Worcester, Massachusetts, after printer Isaiah Thomas’s arrival in April 1775. As the title explains, it is A Narrative, of the Excursion and Ravages of the…

The New-Hampshire Gazette, published by Daniel Fowle (ca. 1715-87), was typical of many newspapers throughout the colonies that protested the steep taxes instituted by the Stamp Act on virtually every aspect of a printer’s business. Printers…

This broadside proclaims the “Glorious News” that on March 18, 1766, the king had given his assent to Parliament’s act to repeal the Stamp Act. In order to authenticate the news, the broadside explains exactly where it came from: a ship of John…

The first newspaper to appear in America outside Boston was the American Weekly Mercury, launched by Andrew Bradford (1686-1742) in Philadelphia in 1719. His father, William Bradford (1663-1752), had opened the first print shop in the new city of…

Although it is now the calligraphic version of the Declaration—commissioned by Congress and signed by all the members after it had been accepted by the colonies—that is most familiar today, it was actually through the printed version that the…

This engraved map was published in London in March 1787. It details the siege of Yorktown in 1781, the last great battle of the American Revolution. It clearly shows the American and French forces as they surround the British forces under the command…

As they had been in the pre-war years, broadsides continued to be a way to spread and provide commentary on the news. This broadside features two poems about the surrender of Yorktown. The first is “A Poem Spoken Extempore, by a Young Lady, on…

James Rivington (1724-1802), publisher of Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer, was born in London and was a bookseller in his native land before immigrating to the colonies in 1760. He eventually established a bookstore in New York and then ventured into…