William Parks: The Colonial Printer in the Transatlantic World of the Eighteenth Century

by A. Franklin Parks

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780271052120
Publisher:	Penn State University Press
Publication date:	03/15/2016
Series:	Penn State Series in the History of the Book , #18
Pages:	232
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

A. Franklin Parks was Professor of English at Frostburg State University.

Table of Contents

Contents

List of Figures

Preface

Acknowledgments

1 Endings and Beginnings

2 The Worcestershire Apprentice

3 Striking Out on His Own

4 All the Encouraging Prospects of Success

5 Printing and Publishing in “The Age of Clamour”

6 “Printer to the Right Honourable the Lord Proprietor, and the Province” of Maryland

7 Economics, Enlightenment, and the Maryland Gazette

8 Transforming the Discourse

9 Serving Two Masters

10 The Williamsburg Print Shop

11 Controversy and the Virginia Gazette

12 William Parks, Gent.

Epilogue

Appendix: Parks’s Family Background

Notes

Index

Editorial Reviews

This very welcome biography gathers up a surprising number of scholarly notes on and references to the important early American printer and newspaper publisher William Parks, and then adds new documentary evidence to the pile. To tell the story (and that it is a good narrative is one of the book’s strengths), A. Franklin Parks has truly had to produce a transatlantic study, not only because the materials of production and the information communicated involved British and American relations but also because Parks the printer worked in both worlds. Readers will be glad to get to know William Parks. He is an engaging and interesting man, a man of vision who enlightened two colonies.”

—Jim May,editor of the Eighteenth-Century Intelligencer

“This very welcome biography gathers up a surprising amount of scholarly notes on and book references to the important early American printer and newspaper publisher William Parks, and then adds new documentary evidence to the pile. To tell the story (and that it is a good narrative is one of the book's strengths) Professor A. Franklin Parks has truly had to produce a transatlantic study.”

—James E. May The Eighteenth Century Intelligencer

“Overall, this rich narrative is not only a nice addition to Lawrence Wroth’s works on Parks and colonial printing but also to the history of the book. While students of colonial America and the Atlantic world will benefit from this book, the author demonstrates new avenues to explore in studies on period reading and literature.”

—K. A. Wisniewski Maryland Historical Magazine

“This study is a valuable guide to the contexts in which religious, social and political print discourse took place in the southern colonies during the first decades of the eighteenth century.”

—Chris Fauske Anglican and Episcopal History

From the Publisher