The New Jersey Book Trade, 1696-1830
Item #15769
FELCONE, JOSEPH J. The New Jersey Book Trade, 1696-1830: A Biographical Directory of Printers, Publishers, Newspaper Proprietors, Bookbinders, Papermakers, and Others in Related Trades. Princeton, 2025. 179 p. Cloth.
Joseph Felcone has collected, studied, and written about early printed New Jerseyana for more than fifty years. His latest book is the first reference work devoted to the early book and newspaper trade in New Jersey. The text identifies every individual known to have had a part in that trade through the year 1830. Each entry contains a summary of the subject’s activities in the trade as well as references for further research. Following the book’s main text is a detailed record, arranged chronologically by town, of every newspaper published in New Jersey through 1830, with the date of establishment, names and date spans of each printer/publisher, and all title changes and mergers throughout the paper’s existence.
The few published registers and directories of the early American book trade—for New York, Philadelphia, and elsewhere—were compiled in large part from city directories. That important resource is not available in New Jersey, where the first city directory (for Newark) was not published until 1835. The present work was compiled after five decades of research in every New Jersey historical resource, including newspapers, printers’ and publishers’ imprints, published and unpublished local historical records, and any other source that identified an individual working in the New Jersey book trade.
Price: $30.00