Beautifully illustrated study explores every aspect of the American printer and his craft from 1639 to 1800.

William Parks: The Colonial Printer in the Transatlantic World of the Eighteenth Century is a cultural biography that traces the important early American printer and newspaper publisher&’s path from the rural provinces of England to London and then to colonial Maryland and Virginia. While incorporating much new biographical information, the book widens the lens to take in the print culture on both sides of the Atlantic&—as well as the societal pressures on printing and publishing in England and colonial America in the early to mid-eighteenth century, with the printer as a focal point. After a struggling start in England, William Parks became a critical figure for both Annapolis and Williamsburg. He provided the southern United States with its first newspapers as well as civic leadership, book printing and selling, paper, and even postal services. Despite Jefferson&’s later dismissal of his Williamsburg newspaper as simply a governmental organ, Parks often pushed the limits of what was expected of a public printer, occasionally getting into trouble and confronting the kind of control and censorship that would eventually make evident the need for press freedoms in the new republic. It has often been asserted that, had Parks not died unexpectedly and relatively young, his reputation would have rivaled that of Franklin as a printer, entrepreneur, and man of affairs.

Hugh Gaine was a Colonial New York printer who in the second year of the American Revolution first allied his press to the American cause, then deserted to publish his newspaper for the British. This first book-length biography of Gaine contributes substantially to our knowl­edge of journalism in the Colonial period and provides fascinating insights into life in Revolutionary times. Gaine was more than a turncoat Amer­ican, Lorenz shows. From his reading of the files of Gaine's newspaper, from un­published material, and from a wide va­riety of printed sources, Lorenz has pieced together this study of economic and political conservatism, religious be­lief, and social class feelings which made Gaine a prototypal Loyalist to the British cause, though a citizen, or at least a resi­dent, of the United States, to the end of his days, in 1807.

Covers events from Columbus to 1621.

Printers played a major role in the American Revolution. They risked their careers and freedom for printing seditious ideas in their newspapers. Readers will discover how the printing press worked and how vital a printer was to the community. A fun historical topic in a graphic presentation that will captivate young readers.