¹ The terms ‘patriot’, ‘revolutionary’ ‘loyalist’ and ‘conservative’ and their derivatives are used for convenience in a descriptive sense. The word ‘radical’ is anachronistic but is widely employed and remains the most useful term available. The term England and its derivatives refer to England; they exclude Wales, Scotland and Ireland.

² For a bibliography of pamphlets printed in America between 1764 and 4 July 1776, see Adams, Thomas R., American Independece (Providence, R.I., 1965)Google Scholar. This invaluable study includes the various editions and printings in England but omits those pamphlets concerned with the debate over episcopacy. For an analysis of the significance of the pamphlets in their American context, see Bailyn, Bernard, Pamphlets of the American Revolution, 1750–1776, vol. 1 (Cambridge, Mass., 1965)Google Scholar and The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1967).Google Scholar

³ Mr Adams is preparing a full bibliography of British pamphlets relating to the revolution; it will be published under the title The American Controversy: a Bibliographical Study of the British Pamphlets Concerning the American Dispute, 1763–1783. His preliminary check list has been of very great help in preparing this article.

⁴ For the role of Benjamin Franklin as a publicist see Crane, Verner W., Benjamin Franklin's Letters to the Press, 1759–1775 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1950); for Arthur Lee, see Alvin R. Riggs, ‘Arthur Lee and the Radical Whigs’ (unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, Yale University, 1967) especially Chapter 1.Google Scholar

⁵ Problems of definition make it impractical to be precise in enumeration. The overall figure of seventy-five excludes pamphlets that were outside the broad context of the patriot-loyalist debate, publications of colonial agents in England such as William Bollan, and the pamphlets written by loyalists after they arrived in England. It includes a number of official and quasi-official public documents. Mr Adams estimates that approximately seven hundred British pamphlets were devoted entirely or almost entirely to the American issue; his more restricted definition of a pamphlet produces a somewhat lower figure for reprintings in England.

⁶ Adams, , American Independence, pp. 2–3. In all there were four printings by and others in 1766.Google Scholar

⁷ The Declaration of Independence was not printed on its own in pamphlet form England, though it was reprinted in the.newspapers, in various collections of public papers, and as a broadsheet.

⁸ An Appeal to the World (London, 1769)Google Scholar, title page; Lovejoy, David S., Rhode Island Politics in the American Revolution (Providence, R.I., 1958)Google Scholar, p. 73. Crane, Franklin's Letters, pp. xIix, 121–2; Riggs, ‘Arthur Lee’, pp. gn., 62–3. According to the Virginia Gazette (Dixon and Hunter), copies of the address were distributed free to Englishmen who had received copies of American editions of the pamphlet (Adams, , American Independence, p. 91).Google Scholar

⁹ Richard Champion to the duke of Portland, 14 August 1775, Portland MSS, PWF 2713, Nottingham University.

¹⁰ Butterfield, L. H., ‘The American Interests of the Firm of E. and C. Dilly, With Their Letters to Benjamin Rush, 1770–1795’, The Papers of The Bibliographical Society of America, XLV (1951), 296Google Scholar; Edward Dilly to John Dickinson, 28 Jan. 1775, Dickinson Papers, Library Company of Philadelphia; The Constitutions of the Several Independent States (London, 1783), title page.Google Scholar

¹¹ Almon, John, Memoirs of a Late Eminent Bookseller London, 1790, p. 92.Google Scholar

¹² Gegenheimer, Albert Frank, William Smith (Philadelphia, 1943), p. 169. Perhaps Smith's sermon was sent by Dickinson in response to Dilly's request.Google Scholar

¹³ Thomas Hollis, MS Diary, vi, fo. 169, Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.

¹⁴ Hollis, Diary, III, 27, 28, 62, 116. For Hollis's part in resisting the establishment of a bishopric in America, see Bridenbaugh, Carl, Mitre and Sceptre (New York, 1962)Google Scholar, esp. pp. 194–202 and 282–3. Caroline Robbins first pointed to Hollis's importance in the distribution of radical literature in the colonies and American tracts in England in her articles ‘The Strenuous Whig, Thomas Hollis of Lincoln's Inn’, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser, vii (1950), 430–41Google Scholar, and ‘Library of Liberty: Assembled for Harvard College by Thomas Hollis of Lincoln's Inn’, Harvard Library Bulletin, v (1951), 5-–23.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Hollis, Diary, vi, 57, 84, 93, 119, 124; v, 149, 151.

¹⁶ Hernlund, Patricia, ‘William Strahan's Ledgers: Standard Charges for Printing, 1738–1785’, Studies in Bibliography, xx (1967), 104Google Scholar. Cf. Altick, Richard D., The English Common Reader (Chicago, 1957), p. 50.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Strahan Papers, British Library, Add. MSS 48,415, fo. 63. The account also lists the printings and costs of other tracts published between 1779 and 1784.

¹⁸ Ibid. Add. MSS 48,803A, fos. 47, 79, 83; 48, 801, fos. 40, 61.

¹⁹ Ibid. Add. MSS 48, 815, fo. 33.

²⁰ Sir William M eredith to Thomas Cadell, 23 July 1774, MS 948, fo. 11, National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh. Ultimately the pamphlet went through five editions; possibly the total printing ran to around a thousand copies.

²¹ Richard Price to William Adams, 14Aug. 1776, D6/F100, Gloucestershire Record Office, Gloucester. Cadell's judgement was vindicated. The first edition sold out in a couple of days or so, a second was in the press by 14 February, and by the beginning of March the tract was already in its sixth edition. It was also being printed in much larger quantities than was usual; within a few months sixty thousand copies had been issued in fourteen editions in London and other places besides (Joseph Priestley to Franklin, 13 Feb. 1776, Franklin Papers, iv, 79, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia; Price to Adams, 14 Feb. 1776, Glos. R.O. D6/F140; Cone, Carl B., Torchbearer of Freedom: The Influence of Richard Price on Eighteenth Century Thought [Lexington, Ky., 1952], pp. 77–8)Google Scholar. On the other hand, Cadell had been unable to sell more than 400 copies of ‘Mr Glover's pamphlet’, nor more than 500 of James Macpherson's Rights of Great Britain Asserted, even though it was in the sixth of its ten London editions, because the government was distributing thousands of copies (Price to Adams, 14 Aug. 1776). For further instances of 500-copy print runs see [T. P. Andrews] to Almon, 16 Apr. 1776 (B.L. Add. MSS 20,733, fo. 6), and Joseph Johnson's comment that he printed about five or six hundred copies of Barlow, Joel's Letter to the National Convention of France (Morning Chronicle, 30 Oct. 1794).Google Scholar

²² Almon was reputed to have made a profit of £10,000 by pamphlets, selling (Christie, Ian R., Wilkes, Wyvill and Reform [London, 1962], p. 18)Google Scholar. Cf. Adams, Thomas R., ‘The British Pamphlets of the American Revolution for 1774: A Progress Report’, Massachusetts Historical Society, Proceedings, LXXXI (1969), 34. Cadell, who published Price's Civil Liberty, also printed John Lind's Answer to the Declaration of The American Congress, Macpherson's tract and other anti-American pamphlets.Google Scholar

²³ Adams, ‘Progress Report’, p. 39.

²⁴ Hollis, Diary, III, 28, 62, 116; Hollis subsidized publication of the Short Narrative the amount of three guineas.

²⁵ Ibid. iv, 57, 58, 151, 152; v, 170, 171, 237; vi, 1, 154, 169. Hollis's diary contains other references to his publishing activities on behalf of the colonies.

²⁶ I owe the former suggestion to Mr Adams.

²⁷ Hendrick, Burton J., The Lees of Virginia: Biography of A Family (Boston, 1935), P. 169Google Scholar; Franklin to Almon, 7 Nov. 1774, Amy Lowell Collection, Houghton Library; Almon Franklin, 5 Dec. 1774, Franklin Papers, iv, 35, A.P.S.; Adams, American Independence, 92–4.Google Scholar

²⁸ Charles Dilly to Benjamin Rush, 26 June 1783, Butterfield, ‘American Interests’, 314. In contrast to the experience of earlier years, the English market for American publications after the revolution was extremely difficult. Dilly had to tell Rush in 1786 that he was very doubtful as to whether his proposed memoir on the revolution in Pennsylvania would sell in England (Dilly to Rush, 2 Dec. 1786, ibid. p. 327) and other American authors had similar difficulties (cf. John Adams to Mercy Warren, 25 Dec. 1787, ‘Warren-Adams Letters’, Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections, LXXIII [1925], 301).Google Scholar

²⁹ Franklin, to Price, 13 June 1782 Price Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.Google Scholar

³⁰ Hollis, to Mayhew, Jonathan, 6 Dec. 1763Google Scholar, 28 Aug. and 10 Oct. 1764, Bernard Knollenberg (ed.), ‘Thomas Hollis and Jonathan Mayhew: Their Correspondence, 1759–1766’, Massachusetts Historical Society, Proceedings, LXIX (1956), 142–3Google Scholar, 156, 157. The intervening Defence of the Observations … was dispatched by Mayhew, on 21 Nov. 1763Google Scholar for distribution among Hollis's English friends but was only ready for publication in London at the end of the session in April (Hollis, to Mayhew, , 4 April 1764Google Scholar, ibid. p. 145; Hollis, Diary, III, 62, 74).

³¹ Adams, John to Dwight, Timothy, 4 April 1786, Adams Papers (Microfilm edition), Reel 113, Massachusetts Historical Society, which possesses the originals.Google Scholar

³² Hollis, to Mayhew, , 4 April 1764.Google Scholar

³³ The normality of private distribution can be amply demonstrated. T. P. Andrews, an obscure pamphleteer, informed Almon that he was not anxious to make a profit on his tract but hoped that it would be pretty much read if it were published immediately (Add. MSS 20,733, fo 6). Frequently English tracts on the revolution were circulated in this manner. Sir William Meredith instructed his publisher to send copies of his Letter to the Earl of Chatham on the Quebec Bill to ‘the chancellor’, Lord Mansfield, the duke of Grafton, and two copies to his brother-in-law the Hon. Frederick Vane, M.P.; ten years later Richard Price sent a copy of the early edition of his Observations on the Importance of the American Revolution, of which few copies were printed, to the leading parliamentary reformer Christopher Wyvill. In between times tracts and papers on American affairs circulated widely. Price sent Joseph Priestley an early copy of Civil Liberty, and Priestley passed one to Franklin. Granville Sharp initially printed only a few copies of his Declaration of the People's Natural Right to a Share in the Legislature because he intended it primarily for private distribution; for his part he received Capel Lofft's View of the Several Schemes with Respect to America and John Cartwright's Memorial of Common Sense direct from their respective authors. On the other side of the argument the government distributed thousands of copies of anti-American pamphlets and Josiah Wedgwood, the potter, was astounded to receive by special messenger from a neighbour six copies of John Wesley's ill-named tract A Calm Address to Our American Colonies (Meredith to Cadell, 24 July 1774; Price to Christopher Wyvill, 6 Jan. 1785; Wyvill Papers ZFW 7/2/48/6, North Yorkshire Record Office, Northallerton; Priestley to Caleb Rotheram, 9 Feb. 1776, Rutt, John Towill, The Life and Correspondence of Joseph Priestley [2 vols.; London 1831], 1, 289–90Google Scholar; to Franklin, , 13 Feb. 1776Google Scholar; Monthly Review, LIII [08 1775], 180Google Scholar; MS note on the title pages of the copies in the John Carter Brown Library, Providence, R.I., and the Hough ton Library respectively; Wedgwood, Josiah to Bentley, Thomas, 5 Nov. 1775, Wedgwood Papers, Microfilm edition, ed. Anne Finer. [The Wedgwood Papers are now at the University of Keele.]).Google Scholar

³⁴ Committee of the Sons of Liberty of Boston to Wilkes, John, 6 June 1768Google Scholar; Palfrey, William to Wilkes, , 21 Oct. 1769Google Scholar; Bowdoi, James et al. to Wilkes, , 23 March 1770 (B.L. Add. MSS 30,870, fos. 45, 212; 30,871, fos. 19–20). Hollis was also asked to use his influence following the Boston Massacre (‘Biographical Account of Thomas Hollis’, fos. 124–5 Mayhew Papers, Bortmann File, Boston University). He did so in his customary manner.Google Scholar

³⁵ Palfrey asked Wilkes to pass a copy of Hutchinson's Collection to Mrs Macaulay, Palfrey, to Wilkes, , 21 Oct. 1769; Catharine Macaulay to the Town of Boston, 9 May 1770, Boston Public Library. Boston Public Library.Google Scholar

³⁶ Chauncy, Charles to Price, 22 March 1770Google Scholar, Boston Public Library; Cozens-Hardy, Basil, ed., The Diary of Sylas Neville: 1767–88 (London, 1950), pp. 244–5.Google Scholar

³⁷ Hollis, to Mayhew, , 24 June 1765, ‘Hollis-Mayhew Correspondence’, p. 171.Google Scholar

³⁸ For example, Hollis, to Mayhew, , 4 April 1764Google Scholar, ibid. p. 144; Mayhew, to Hollis, , received 24 Aug. 1764Google Scholar, ibid. p. 149; Mayhew, to Hollis, , 24 June 1764, p. 153Google Scholar. Mayhew, to Hollis, , 30 May 1766Google Scholar, ibid. p. 188; Hollis, Diary, iv, fo. 135.

³⁹ Hollis, Diary, in, fo. 38.

⁴⁰ Ibid. v, fos. 131, 135.

⁴¹ Ibid. fos. 57, 156–7.

⁴² Ibid. vi, fos. 57, 64, 70. Andrew Eliot had succeeded Mayhew as Hollis's correspondent after the latter's death in 1766.

⁴³ Hollis, Diary, vi, fos. 124, 155, 156, 157; Franklin, to Cushing, Thomas, 7 July 1773Google Scholar, Public Record Office, CO. 5/118, fo. 61. Sayre, Stephen to Adams, Samuel, 5 June 1770, Samuel Adams Papers, New York Public Library.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ ‘Register of a Pamphlet Club, Ely’, B.L. Add. MSS 44,973. Champion to Portland, 14 August, 1775; Adams, ‘Checklist’, p. 300; John Money, ‘Public Opinion in the West Midlands’ (unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, University of Cambridge, 1967), p. 251; Lee, Richard Henry, Life of Arthur Lee (2 vols in 1, Boston, 1829), 1, 262Google Scholar. Adams, , American Independence, pp. 46–7Google Scholar, 170. The Birmingham Library nevertheless owned several American tracts including Common Sense and the Constitutions of the United States (Catalogue, 1798).Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Chambers, William to Lindsey, , 18 May [1776], Rutt, Life of Priestley, 1, 282n. His expression of hope that someone would give a copy to Almon so that it could be given a general circulation illustrates the importance of securing an English printing if a pamphlet was to have any great distribution in England.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Percival, Thomas to Franklin, , 21 June 1774; Franklin Papers, iv, 21 A.P.S.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Wedgwood, to Bentley, , 5 Nov. 1775.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Wedgwood, to Bentley, , 11 Dec. 1775, Wedgwood Papers. The ‘Old Member’ referred to An Appeal to the Justice and Interest of the People of Great Britain in the Present Disputes with America, which was written by Arthur Lee under the nom de plume ‘An Old Member of Parliament’.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Wedgwood, to Bentley, , 21 and 24 Feb. and 24 May 1776Google Scholar; ibid. ‘The Wodrow-Kenrick Correspondence’, MS 24:157, passim, Dr Williams's Library.

⁵⁰ Monthly Review, xxxix (1768), 18–26. Crane, Letters of Franklin, p. lli; Kenrick to Wodrow, 29 Jan. 1776, D.W.L. 24:157, fo. 55.Google Scholar

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⁵² Evans, R. H., Catalogue of the Library of the Late Samuel Heywood, Esq. Sergeant at Law (London, 1829)Google Scholar; Heywood quoted at length from Franklin's article in the London Packet of 3 June 1772 in his pamphlet The Right of Protestant Dissenters to a Compleat Toleration Asserted (London, 1787), pp. 226–8Google Scholar. The quotation was actually taken from Benjamin Vaughan's edition of Franklin's Political Miscellaneous and Philosophical Pieces (London, 1779).Google Scholar

⁵³ Thomas, and Egerton, John, A Catalogue of Books including the Libraries of John Jebb et al. (London, 1787).Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Priestley commented that his claim for compensation took no account of the loss of pamphlets which, he thought, must have been worth at least £10 (‘Appeal to the Public on the Subject of the Riots in Birmingham[ [25 vols.; London, 1817–1831], xix, 494).

⁵⁵ Leigh, and Sotheby, , A Catalogue of the Entire Library of the Late Granville Sharp, Esq. (London, 1813).Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Leigh, and Sotheby, , A Catalogue of the Library of the Late Dr. Price (London, 1799).Google Scholar

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⁵⁹ Dr Williams's Library, London: Subject Catalogue. Items with the prefix ‘L’ against the shelf number came from Lindsey's library.

⁶⁰ Wedgwood, to Bentley, , 6 Feb. 1775Google Scholar, Wedgwood Papers, Roebuck, Enquiry, passim; Wesley, John, A Calm Address to Our American Colonies (London, 1775), p. 19.Google Scholar

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⁶² Ibid. pp. 155, 158n, 171, i72n. Arthur Lee to Richard Henry Lee, 27 Dec. 1768, Lee Family Papers (microfilm edition), ed. Paul P. Hoffman (Charlottesville, Va., 1966), reel 1.

⁶³ [Burgh, James], Political Disquisitions (3 vols.; London, 1774–1775), 11Google Scholar, vii; Carla H. Hay, ‘Benjamin Franklin, Burgh, James, and the Authorship of “The Colonist's Advocate” Letters’, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., XXXII (1975), 119, 120–2Google Scholar; Price, Richard, Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty (3rd ed.; London, 1775)Google Scholar, p. 50n.; Toulmin, Joshua, The American War Lamented (London, 1776), p. 11Google Scholar; Cartwright, John, The Legislative Rights of the Commonalty Vindicated (London, 1777), p. 205n.Google Scholar; earl of Abingdon, , Thoughts on the Letter of Edmund Burke (6th ed., Oxford, 1777), p. 58n.Google Scholar; Price, Observations on the Importance of the American Revolution (London, 1784), pp. 47–8.Google Scholar

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⁶⁶ [Cartwright, John], American Independence the Interest and Glory of Great Britain (A New Ed.; London, 1775), pp. 5n., 70–71Google Scholar, Appendix p. 9, ‘A Letter to Edmund Burke’, p. 11; Cartwright to Lord Howe, 6 Feb. 1776, Cartwright, Frances Dorothy, The Life and Correspondence of Major Cartwright (2 vols.; London, 1826), 1, 76.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Lofft, Capel, Observations on Mr. Wesley's Second Calm Address and Incidentally on the Other Writings upon the American Question (London, 1777), pp. 18–19,Google Scholar 86n., 87, 87n.; Evans, , Letter to Wesley, pp. 19, 21–2.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ Foord, Archibald S., His Majesty's Opposition, 1714–1830 (Oxford, 1964), p. 352Google Scholar. Edmund Burke was well aware of the importance of following up the success of his Thoughts on the Present Discontents but the Rockinghams neglected this policy in favour of petitioning (ibid.).