The authors are grateful to Elizabeth L. Eisenstein for encouragement, criticism, and suggestions, and wish to thank Catherine Clinton for assistance with research. Grants from the American Philosophical Society and from the National Endowment for the Humanities funded the research on the French press.

¹ For the purposes of this study, the term periodical has been limited to publications that appeared at least quarterly, and that were intended for a general audience rather than a special interest group or organization.

² To appreciate the earlier elaboration of scholarship concerning English-language periodicals, see Weed, Katherine Kirtley and Bond, Richmond Pugh et al. , Studies of British Newspapers and Periodicals from Their Beginning to 1800: A Bibliography (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1946)Google Scholar; this should be compared with the bibliography in Claude Bellanger, Histoire générate de la presse française (Paris, 1969), I, 511–87.Google Scholar

³ It should be emphasized, however, that the following categories are not exhaustive. One interesting exception among English-language studies is Merritt, Richard L., Symbols of American Community, 1734–1775 (New Haven, 1966)Google Scholar. At the University of Lyons a team of academics has recently begun to develop innovative approaches, particularly to the structure of journalistic prose. Their work may be found in the serial, Etudes sur la presse au xviii^e siècle (1974–1978)Google Scholar; Rétat, Pierre and Sgard, Jean, Presse et histoire au xviii^e siècle. L'annee 1734 (1977)Google Scholar; and Rétat, Pierre, ed., L'Attentat de Damiens. Discours sur l'evènement au xviii^e siècle (1979)Google Scholar, all three published in Lyons. This work builds on previous scholarship, including Ehrard, Jean and Roger, Jacques, “Deux périodiques franços du 18^e siècle: ‘Le Journal des Savants’ et ‘Les Memoires de Trevoux’. Essai d'une étude quantitative”, in Bolleme, G. et al. , Livre et société dans la France du xviii^e siècle (Paris, 1965), I, 33–59Google Scholar, and d'Ainvelle, Madeline Varin, La presse en France. Genèse et évolution de ses fonctions psycho-sociales (Paris, 1965).Google Scholar

⁴ See, for example, Hatin's, Eugéne classic Histoire politique et litteraire de la presse en France, 8 vols. (1859–1961; reprint Geneva, 1967)Google Scholar. An early English-language example of the genre is Buckingham, Joseph T., Specimens of Newspaper Literature …, 2 vols. (Boston, 1850)Google Scholar. Press “biographies” have been numerous in the English-language field, ranging from Carlson, C. Lennart. The First Magazine: A History of the “Gentleman's Magazine” (Providence, R.I., 1938)Google Scholar, to Haig, L. R., The Gazetteer, 1735–1797: A Study in the Eighteenth-Century English Newspaper (Carbondale, III., 1968)Google Scholar. Full-length studies of individual French-language periodicals are rare, but a fair number of shorter such biographies have been published. Among the best are Birn, Raymond, “Le Journal des Savants sous l'ancien régime”, Journal des Savants. Edition tricentenaire (Paris, 1965), 15–35Google Scholar, and the section on the Courrier d'Avignon in Moulinas, René, L'lmprimerie, la librairie et la presse à Avignon au xviii^e siècle (Grenoble, 1974), 273–391.Google Scholar

⁵ Examples abound in Weed and Bond, Studies of British Newspapers and Periodicals. For analogous treatment of the French-language press, see Maurice Massip, “L'Almanach de Toulouse. Ses origines, ses transformations”, Mémoires de l'Académie de Toulouse, 8 (1932), 111–25Google Scholar; and Vingtrinier, Aimé, Histoire de l'imprimerie à Lyon de l'origine jusqu' à nos jours (Lyons, 1894).Google Scholar

⁶ French historians of the press have excelled in this respect ever since Hatin's, EugèneBibliographic historique et critique de la presse française (Paris, 1866)Google Scholar. Recently, as part of a larger project under the editorship of Jean Sgard, scholars in this field have compiled the most complete inventory to date of extant journals; see Dictionnaire des journaux (1600–1789). Liste alphabétique des titres (Grenoble, 1978)Google Scholar. For one standard English-language bibliography, see Crane, R. S. and Kaye, F. B., A Census of British Newspapers and Periodicals, 1620–1800 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1927).Google Scholar

⁷ More or less sophisticated variations on this theme include Hanson, L. W., Government and the Press, 1695–1763 (Oxford, 1936)Google Scholar; Siebert, F. J., The Freedom of the Press in England, 1476–1776 (Urbana, III., 1952)Google Scholar; Rea, Robert R., The English Press in Politics: 1769–1774 (Lincoln, Neb., 1963)Google Scholar; Schlesinger, Arthur M., Prelude to Independence: The Newspaper War on Britain, 1764–1776 (New York, 1958)Google Scholar. For a different approach, see Levy, Leonard W., Legacy of Suppression: Freedom of Speech and Press in Early American History (Cambridge, Mass., 1960)Google Scholar; a striking reconceptualization of the subject is available in Brewer, John, Party Ideology and Popular Politics at the Accession of George III (Cambridge, 1976).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁸ For the best bibliography of the vast literature on the revolutionary press, see Bellanger, , Histoire générate, I, 588–94Google Scholar. Some of the more recent prerevolutionary studies are Birn, Raymond F., Pierre Rousseau and the Philosophes of Bouillon (Geneva, 1964)Google Scholar; Balcou, Jean, Fréron contre les philosophes (Geneva, 1975)Google Scholar; and Wagner, Jacques, Marmontel journaliste et la Mercure de France (Grenoble, 1977)Google Scholar. Such journalists usually challenged the government's authority on abstract questions of freedom and reform but stayed out of the political struggle between the monarch and his critics in the parlements. A good example of the literature on censorship is Hermann-Mascard, Nicole, La Censure des livres à Paris à la fin de l'ancien régime (1750–1789) (Paris, 1968)Google Scholar. Significant exceptions to the general pattern of scholarship identified here include Azam, Denise Aimé, “Le Ministère des affaires étrangères et la presse à la fin de l'Ancien Régime”, Cahiers de la presse, 3 (1938), 428–38.Google Scholar

⁹ Again, of course, there have been exceptions. For example, indications of French social life are of concern in Gasc, Michèle, “La naissance de la presse périodique locale à Lyon. Les Affiches de Lyon, Annonces et avis divers” in Etudes sur la presse au XVIII^e siècle, 3 (1978), 61–80Google Scholar; and see Lebrun, E., “Une source de l'histoire sociale; la presse provinciate à la fin de l'Ancien Régime. ‘Les Affiches de Angers,’ 1773–1789”, Le Mouvement social, 40 (1962), 56–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Two studies of English-language periodicals that provide valuable insight into the social history of the period are Cranfield, G. A., The Development of the Provincial Newspaper: 1700–1760 (Oxford, 1962)Google Scholar, and Wiles, R. M., Freshest Advices: Early Provincial Newspapers in England (Columbus, Ohio, 1965)Google Scholar. At a much more general level, Cranfield's The Press and Society from Caxton to Northcliffe (London, 1978), chs. 1–3, is worth consulting.Google Scholar

¹⁰ For an example of such terminology applied within the context of modernization theory, see Hyman, Herbert, “Mass Media and Political Socialization: The Role of Patterns of Communication”, in Communications and Political Development, Pye, Lucian W., ed. (Princeton, 1963), 128–48.Google Scholar

¹¹ Williams, Raymond, Communications (London, 1966), 18Google ScholarPubMed. In some circumstances, to be sure, techniques of everyday reportage could be highly politicized; see Leonard, Thomas C., “News for a Revolution: The Exposé in America, 1768–1773”, Journal of American History, 67 (1980–1981), 26–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹² On the importance of demand, even where editorial choice reflected considerations of safety and convenience, see Gibbs, G. C., “Newspapers, Parliament, and Foreign Policy in the Age of Stanhope and Walpole”, in Mélanges offerts à G. Jacquemyns (Brussels, 1968), 293–315Google Scholar. This analysis assumes that readers and editors perceived papers as a whole, even though, then as now, some would have been most interested in agricultural notices, some in foreign advices, and some in the advertisements.

¹³ Classic theoretical formulations that are relevant here include Robert Park, E., “Reflections on Communication and Culture”, American Journal of Sociology, 44 (1939), 191–205Google Scholar; Deutsch, Karl W., ‘ ‘The Growth of Nations: Some Recurrent Patterns of Political and Social Integration”, World Politics, 5 (1953), 168–95. Unfortunately, communications theory must be used carefully in eighteenth-century studies because characteristically it focuses on the effects of twentieth-century mass media.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁴ A good summary of standard methodological issues, some of which bear particularly on strategies of comparative interpretation, is still provided by George, Alexander L., “Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches to Content Analysis”, in Trends in Content Analysis, Ithiel de Sola Pool, ed. (Urbana, III., 1959), 7–32.Google Scholar

¹⁵ The sample includes provincial and metropolitan periodicals published in France and England, as well as periodicals published outside the borders of France for a French audience. The provincial English press has been defined as including publishers in the American colonies, where the development of periodical publication closely paralleled that of, for instance, Devon or Yorkshire, but as excluding those in Scotland, where periodical journalism developed later. For a description and elaborate chronology of this development, see Craig, Mary Elizabeth, The Scottish Periodical Press, 1750–1789 (Edinburgh, 1931).Google Scholar

The late 1750s and early 1760s have been selected for emphasis because these years are late enough to reveal the full development of the press but predate the revolutionary disturbances that greatly increased the political content of periodicals. For the decade 1755–64, eight Frenc-language and eight English-language periodicals have been examined, at the rate of one issue in ten for weekly papers, with appropriate adjustments for publications appearing at significantly different intervals. To qualify for inclusion in this sample, a periodical had to have endured for at least three years. For France, the one surviving provincial journal (Affiches de Lyon) and the government paper (Gazette de France) were selected, along with an influential Parisian periodical (Affiches de Paris) and an influential foreign periodical (Courrier d' Avignon). Foreign papers were those produced outside of France but for the French market. Two additional foreign journals were chosen by random sample (Gazette de Bruxelles, Nouvelle bibliothèque germanique) and two Parisian ones (Annates typographiques, Affiches de province). The English-language sample includes an influential London periodical (Gazetteer), another from the English provinces (Manchester Mercury), and another from the American colonies (Pennsylvania Journal). This was enlarged by random selection of two more London periodicals (London Chronicle, London Daily Advertiser), one from the provinces (Bath Journal), and two from the colonies (Boston NewsLetter, New York Mercury). For 1745–54, the following periodicals have been examined: Affiches de Paris; Cinq annees litteraires (foreign); General Evening Post (London)Google ScholarPubMed; York Courant; Pennsylvania Gazette. For 1765–74: Journal des dames (Paris)Google Scholar; Affiches de l'Orléanais; Gazette de Leyde; Daily Advertiser (London)Google Scholar; Manchester Mercury; Boston Evening Post. For 1775–84: Journal de lecture (Paris); Affiches de Poitou; Courrier d'Avignon; London Chronicle; Manchester Mercury.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Bellanger, , Histoire genéráte, I, 83–157Google Scholar; Handover, P. M., A History of the London Gazette, 1665–1965 (London, 1965), 9–14.Google Scholar

¹⁷ The comparison here is based mainly on Dictionnaire des journaux (1600–1789). Liste alphabétique des titres, and Crane and Kaye, Census of British Newspapers and Periodicals, according to the definition of periodical in note 1. The latter source may be supplemented by Dill, William A., The First Century of American Newspapers (Lawrence, Kansas, 1925)Google Scholar. Obviously, such data must be understood in the light of numerous bibliographical uncertainties. For example, Aspinall, A., “Statistical Accounts of the London Newspapers in the Eighteenth Century”, English Historical Review, 63 (1948), 201–32, lists many titles that appear in official tax records but not in the standard checklists; although such evidence suggests that the periodical count for England might be greatly increased, substantial upward revision would probably give undue weight to ephemeral publications.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁸ Indeed, as indicated above, only the Affiches de Lyon survives from the decade 1755–64; by way of comparison, see Wiles, Freshest Advices, Appendices B and C. On the impact of metropolitan periodicals in the countryside, see Cranfield, , Development of the Provincial NewspaperGoogle Scholar, ch. 8; Loche, Michel, “Liberté de la presse ou la mort. Journaux imprimés à Lyon”, Le Vieux papier, 229 (1968), 4.Google Scholar

¹⁹ As of midcentury, the population of France was probably about 21 million; that of England and her American colonies, under 8 million. See Mitchell, Brian R., European Historical Statistics, 1750–1970 (New York, 1975), 55CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and the same author's Abstract of British Historical Statistics (Cambridge, 1962), 5Google Scholar, along with Potter, J., “The Growth of Population in America, 1700–1860”, in Population in History, Glass, D. V. and Eversley, D. E. C., eds. (Chicago, 1965), 638.Google ScholarPubMed

²⁰ Haig, , Gazetteer, 10–11Google Scholar, 29, 32, 79; Brewer, , Party Ideology, 142–44Google Scholar; Cranfield, , Development of the Provincial Newspaper, 169Google Scholar, 171, 173; Botein, Stephen, “Meer Mechanics' and an Open Press: The Business and Political Strategies of Colonial American Printers”, Perspectives in American History, 9 (1975), 148–50Google Scholar; Carlson, , First Magazine, 62.Google Scholar

²¹ Moulinas, , L'Imprimerie, 319Google Scholar; Bellanger, , Histoire generale, I, 188–99Google Scholar, 328, 330; Loche, , “Liberté de la presse”, p. 7Google Scholar; Tucoo-Chala, Suzanne, Charles-Joseph Panckoucke & la librairie française, 1736–1798 (Pau, 1977), 242–43.Google Scholar

²² See Dictionnaire des journaux (1600–1789). Liste alphabétique des titres. The situation in England is described generally in Graham, Walter, English Literary Periodicals (New York, 1930)Google Scholar, chs. 4–5; specifics concerning content and titles are available in Spector, Robert Donald, English Literary Periodicals and the Climate of Opinion during the Seven Years' War (The Hague, 1966), 371–72, and chs. 1–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²³ Handover, , History of the London GazetteGoogle Scholar, ch. 6; Bellanger, , Histoire générale, I, 188–99.Google Scholar

²⁴ Werkmeister, Lucyle, The London Daily Press, 1772–1792 (Lincoln, Neb., 1963), 2Google Scholar; Cranfield, , Development of the Provincial NewspaperGoogle Scholar, ch. 10; Nichol-Smith, D., “The Newspaper”, in Johnson's England, Turberville, A. S., ed. (Oxford, 1952), II, ch. 27.Google Scholar

²⁵ Of sixty-one French-language periodicals published in 1775, according to Dictionnaire des journaux (1600–1789). Liste alphabétíque des titres, fourteen may be identified as advertisers; see, too, Affiches de Paris, 20 January 1752.Google Scholar

²⁶ French book publishing is surveyed by Pottinger, David T., The French Book Trade in the Ancien Régime, 1500–1791 (Cambridge, Mass., 1958)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for an understanding of the differences between substantial and marginal publishers, see Darnton, Robert “Trade in the Taboo: The Life of a Clandestine Book Dealer in Prerevolutionary France”, in The Widening Circle, Korshin, Paul, ed. (Philadelphia, 1976), 11–83Google Scholar, and Queniart, J., L'Imprimerie et la librairie à Rouen au xvii^e siècle (Paris, 1969)Google Scholar; for data on Panckoucke's activities see Tucoo-Chala, , Panekoucke, 230–44Google Scholar, 459–91; and Damton, Robert, The Business of Enlightenment: A Publishing History of the Encyclopedic 1775–1800 (Cambridge, Mass., 1979)Google Scholar. Useful information about the book trade in mid-eighteenth-century England may be found in Cochrane, J. A., Dr. Johnson's Printer: The Life of William Strahan (Cambridge, Mass., 1964), chs. 1–4.Google Scholar

²⁷ Vingtrinier, , Histoire de I'imprimerie à Lyon, 396–98Google Scholar; Hatin, , Histoire politique, I, 247Google Scholar, 152–57, and II, 120–21; Bellanger, , Histoire générale, I, 189–93Google Scholar; Sgard, Jean, Dictionnaire des journalistes (1600–1789) (Grenoble, 1979), 344Google Scholar; and see Darnton, Robert, “The High Enlightenment and the Low-Life of Literature in Pre-Revolutionary France”, Past and Present, 5 (1971), 81–115CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For an interesting contemporary view of a journalist, see the pamphlet by Jean, MichelDize, Jérôme, Précis historique sur la vie et les travaux de Jean D'Arcet (Paris, 1802).Google Scholar

²⁸ Harris, Michael, “The Management of the London Newspaper Press During the Eighteenth Century”, Publishing History, 4 (1978), 95–112Google Scholar; Carlson, , First MagazineGoogle Scholar, ch. I; Johnson, Samuel, “Cave”, in The Works of Samuel Johnson, Chalmers, Alexander, ed. (London, 1806–1820)Google Scholar, XII, 217n; Cranfield, , Development of the Provincial Newspaper, 56–61Google Scholar; McAnear, Beverly, “James Parker versus John Holt”, Proceedings of the New Jersey Historical Society, 59 (1941), 78–80Google Scholar; The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Labaree, Leonard W. et al. , eds. ( New Haven, 1964), 75Google Scholar. On literary opportunism in eighteenth-century London, see the observations of exPhiladelphian Ralph, James in The Case of Authors by Profession or Trade (1758)Google Scholar, Philip Stevick, ed. (Gainesville, Ha., 1966).

²⁹ On literacy rates, see Lawrence Stone, , “Literacy and Education in England, 1640–1900”, Past and Present, 42 (1969), 69–139CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lockridge, Kenneth A., Literacy in Colonial New England: An Enquiry into the Social Context of Literacy in the Early Modern West (New York, 1974), 99Google Scholar; and Furet, François and Ozouf, Jacques, Lire et écrire. L'Alphabetisation des Français de Calvin à Jules Ferry (Paris, 1977)Google Scholar, 2 vols. On attitudes of the audiences, consult Perkin, Harold, The Origins of Modern English Society, 1780–1880 (London and Toronto, 1969), 17–62Google Scholar; and Roche, Daniel, Le Siècle des lumières en province. Academies et académiciens provinciaux, 1680–1789 (Paris and The Hague, 1979), I, 280–300Google Scholar. Varin d'Ainvelle, La Presse, identifies audience as the determinative factor in shaping the press.

³⁰ These and other statistics presented in this paper are derived from a subsample of the periodicals examined for the decade 1755–64. (See note 15.) For purposes of quantitative analysis, only issues published in the years 1757, 1760, and 1763 were included; when a journal did not exist for one of the designated years, issues from another year were substituted. All categories of analysis are intentionally broad in order to allow for comparison between periodicals serving societies with different structures and terminology. The breakdown of residences reported here is quite approximate. Since the great majority of advertisements did not specify the economic standing of appropriate buyers or tenants, the authors have usually had to make reasonable guesses on the basis of such factors as price and size. From the Affiches de Paris and the Afflches de Lyon, 204Google Scholar advertisements were so classified; from the eight English-language periodicals examined, 303. A much larger number of residences listed in the two French advertisers were unclassifiable, and were not included in these calculations, than in the English-language periodicals; but even if all such notices are assumed to have been aimed at nonwealthy readers and are counted accordingly, the proportion in the French press suitable for wealthy families—35 percent—is about double the proportion in the English press.

³¹ The complexities of systematically comparing prices of periodicals at different times in different regions of different countries are well beyond the scope of this essay, but the point relevant here may be stated simply. Inexpensive French periodicals cost less than 10 livres per year, normally less than 1 percent of annual income for a typical master artisan; this may be considered roughly comparable to paying 15 shillings or less annually to read an English-language periodical on a weekly basis. However, as suggested above, most English language periodicals were advertisers intentionally priced for accessibility, whereas most French-language periodicals were not and indeed sold for anywhere from two to five times as much as advertisers and other periodicals published in the cheaper format.

³² de Ribbe, Charles, Un Journal et un journaliste à Aix avant la Révolution, étude de moeurs sur la ville d'Aix vers la fin du xviii^e siècle (Aix, 1859), 12–13Google Scholar; Hatin, , Histoire politique, III, 316–18;Google ScholarBrewer, , Party Ideology, 148–60.Google Scholar

³³ As indicated in Part I, censorship of the French periodical press has not been studied intensively, but see Hatin, , Histoire politique, III, 337–41Google Scholar; de Bachaumont, Louis Petit, Mémoires secrets pour servir à l'histoire de la république des lettres (London, 1777–87), I, 106–7, 309–15Google Scholar; Birn, , Pierre Rousseau; Frances Acomb, Mallet du Pan (1749–1800): A Career in Political Journalism (Durham, N.C., 1973).Google Scholar On official ventures into publishing after midcentury, see Grimm, Friedrich Melchior et al. , Correspondance littéraire, philosophique, et critique (Paris, 1878), V, 317,Google Scholar and Bachaumont, , Mémoires secrets, I, 8–9, 127, 233–34, 241–42, 246, and II, 18, 30.Google Scholar

³⁴ Carlson, , First Magazine, ch. 4;Google ScholarSiebert, , Freedom of the Press, ch. 17;Google ScholarRea, , English Press, ch. 9.Google Scholar On the possible effect of taxes in limiting consumption, see especially Harris, Michael, “The Structure, Ownership and Control of the Press, 1620–1780”, in Newspaper History from the Seventeenth Century to the Present Day, Boyce, George et al. , eds. (London, 1978), 82–97.Google Scholar

³⁵ Public Advertiser, 19 March 1763Google Scholar; Gazetteer, 27 October 1760Google Scholar; Spector, , English Literary Periodicals, 13.Google Scholar

³⁶ Bellanger, , Histoire générale, I, 188–240.Google Scholar

³⁷ Pennsylvania Gazette, 23 May 1745Google Scholar; York Courant, 17 March 1752.Google Scholar

³⁸ Manchester Mercury, 4 January 1774, 3 January 1764Google Scholar; York Courant, 24 October 1752Google Scholar; Public Advertiser, 17 February 1769Google Scholar; Manchester Mercury, 6 January 1767Google Scholar. A similarly business-minded refrain accompanied the so-called open forum editorial policy of the English-language advertisers. “The Printer”, it was said in the Public Advertiser, “looks on himself only as a purveyor. …” See Rea, , English Press, ch. 2Google Scholar; and Hinkhouse, Fred Junkin, The Preliminaries of the American Revolution as Seen in the English Press, 1763–1775 (New York, 1926), 12–16.Google Scholar General observations relevant to the outlook described here may be found in Duncan, Hugh Dalziel, Communication and Social Order (New York, 1962), ch. 25Google Scholar (on “money as a symbol of social life”); for a curious legal discussion that touches on the same themes, see Middleton, Kent R., “Commercial Speech in the Eighteenth Century”, in Newsletters to Newspapers: Eighteenth-Century Journalism, Bond, Donovan H. and McLeod, W. Reynolds, eds. (Morgantown, W. Va., 1977), 277–89.Google Scholar

³⁹ Affiches de Lyon, 30 January 1762.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Courrier d'Avignon, 5 June 1761Google Scholar; Gazette de Bruxelles, 1 May 1759Google Scholar; Affiches de province, 12 March 1755Google Scholar; Courrier d'Avignon, 19 May 1761Google Scholar. For disapproval of nobility, see Journal des dames, November 1767, 37–38Google Scholar; Journal de lecture, 1, pt. 1 (1775), 57–60, and 12, pt. 3 (1778), 356Google Scholar. Examples of flattery abound; for further documentation, see Courrier d'Avignon, 13 July 1756Google Scholar, and Affiches de Poitou, 18 July 1776.Google Scholar

⁴¹ The account of the Queen's indisposition must have been especially perplexing to distant colonists who came upon it in the New York Mercury, 24 May 1762Google Scholar. Reports of local aristocratic benevolence appeared most frequently in the provincial press; see, for example, York Courant, 6 August 1745.Google Scholar

⁴² London Chronicle, 3 January 1775Google Scholar; Manchester Mercury, 18 March 1776Google Scholar; York Courant, 6 August 1751Google Scholar; Public Advertiser, 2 February 1755Google Scholar; London Chronicle, 30 May 1782.Google Scholar

⁴³ New York Mercury, 3 January 1763Google Scholar; Manchester Mercury, 12 October 1762.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ For example, several Lord Mayors of London were members of the Stationers' Company; see Sale, William M., Jr., Samuel Richardson: Master Printer (Ithaca, N.Y., 1950), 30–31.Google Scholar One, a printer, was satirized anonymously in The Life and Character of John Barber, Esq; Late Lord-Mayor of London, Deceased (London, 1741).Google Scholar

⁴⁵ These statistics are derived from the subsample defined in note 30. Obituaries printed only because they involved sensational violence were not counted. The 4 French-language periodicals examined that regularly printed obituaries attentive to the upper classes were the Gazette de Bruxelles, Courrier d'Avignon, Nouvelle bibliothèque germanique, and Gazette de France; from the subsample, they provided 103 examples for analysis, compared with 131 in the Affiches de Paris. On the usefulness of obituaries to creditors, see the Affiches de I'Orléanais, 24 September 1773. The calculations in both this paragraph of the text and the next include cases where social position was unknown or unclassifiable; there were only fifteen such obituaries in the French-language and only four in the English-language periodicals. As note 30 suggests, however, it is difficult to define eighteenth-century categories of social rank that may be applied to the content of both the French- and the English-language press. Both here and in the analysis of crime stories explained in note 54, a high level of generalization is unavoidable; although designations such as “nobility” and “shopkeeper” are fairly straightforward, the authors have had to use their judgment in classifying individuals whose circumstances appeared ambiguous.

⁴⁶ From the subsample of the Gazetteer, , London Chronicle, London Daily Advertiser, Bath Journal, and Boston News-Letter, 294Google Scholar obituaries were analyzed; the other 3 English-language periodicals examined for this purpose printed very few such notices. Most attentive to the middling classes was the Gazetteer, where 33 of 101 obituaries specifically identified shopkeepers and master artisans; least attentive was the Bath Journal, where 42 of 69 obituaries referred to people whose social rank was distinctly better than middling.

⁴⁷ Boston Evening-Post, 5 January 1767Google Scholar; Public Advertiser, 12 April 1763Google Scholar; General Evening Post, 21 May 1748Google Scholar; York Courant, 20 May 1750Google Scholar; Manchester Mercury, 19 May 1778.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Affiches de l'Orléanais, 30 August 1765, 15 February 1771Google Scholar; Courrier d'Avignon, 19 June 1761Google Scholar. For examples of service advertising, see Affiches de l'Orléanais, 1 February 1765, 25 January 1771Google Scholar; of offices advertised, see Affiches de province, 22 September 1756Google Scholar, and Affiches de Paris, 13 September 1751.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Affiches de Lyon, 10 June 1761Google Scholar; and see Nouvelle bibliothèque germanique April-June 1756, 308–30, for another such anecdote.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Public Advertiser, 16 April, 17 February, 30 December 1758.Google Scholar The subsample of English-language periodicals defined in note 30 contained more than 2,600 advertisements, an average of more than 20 per issue. Of these, about 25 percent were for household goods; 25 percent, for books; 10 percent, for food; 10 percent, for medicine; and the remainder, mainly for real property. The most commercialized of the English-language periodicals examined was the Gazet-teer, with about 32 advertisements per issue.

⁵¹ Courrier d'Avignon, 21 September 1756Google Scholar; Gazette de Leyde, 18 January 1765Google Scholar; Gazette de France, 1 October 1762Google Scholar. For other examples, see Affiches de Poitou, 6 April 1786Google Scholar; Affiches de I'Orléanais, 24 October 1766.Google Scholar

⁵² The entire subsample of French-language periodicals defined in note 30 contained only ten crime stories.

⁵³ Boston Evening-Post, 14 October 1771.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ A total of 220 crimes was reported in the subsample of English-language periodicals, an average of almost 2 per issue; crime stories were most numerous in London's Gazetteer, averaging more than 3 per issue. Overall, the rate of reported crime in London newspapers increased somewhat in 1763, compared with 1760 and 1757; arguably, this change was related to actual behavior influenced by economic conditions. See Beattie, J. M., “The Pattern of Crime in England, 1660–1800”, Past and Present, 62 (1974), 94–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The calculations here concerning victims and criminals include the unidentifiable, which amount to about 10 percent of each category. The apprehension rate described here refers only to original reports of crime and does not include follow-up information presented in subsequent issues. In this respect, news was least reassuring in the colonial American newspapers: of 76 crime stories there, just 3 reported capture. In passing, it might be noted that the everyday content of English-language periodicals in the eighteenth century raises questions about the emphasis on “Jacksonian” ideological influences in Schudson, Michael, Discovering the News: A Social History of American Newspapers (New York, 1978).Google Scholar

⁵⁵ General Evening Post, 10 September 1748Google Scholar; Daily Advertiser, 10 August 1765, 27 April 1768.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ General Evening Post, 10 January 1751Google Scholar; Public Advertiser, 27 April 1756.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ See, generally, Benjamin Franklin's Letters to the Press, Crane, Verner W., ed. (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1950)Google Scholar; Oswald, John Clyde, Benjamin Franklin, Printer (Garden City, N.Y., 1917), ch. 15.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ For a discussion of the dominance of aristocratic values in eighteenth-century French culture, see Lucas, Colin, “Nobles, Bourgeois and the Origins of the French Revolution”, Past and Present, 60 (1973), 84–126.CrossRefGoogle ScholarBrewer, , Party Ideology, chs. 8–9,Google Scholar indicates the growing activism of both the press and the middling orders in England. The argument there contrasts with that concerning books which Alphonse Dupront makes in Bollème, , Livre et société, 1, 218–20.Google Scholar For an illuminating essay on one peculiar sector of the English-language press that in some respects followed the French pattern, see Weir, Robert M., “The Role of the Newspaper Press in the Southern Colonies on the Eve of the Revolution: An Interpretation”, in The Press and the American Revolution, Bailyn, Bernard and Hench, John B., eds. (Worcester, Mass., 1980), 99–150.Google Scholar