John Newbery

English publisher and businessman

• Born: July 19, 1713 (baptized)
• Birthplace: Waltham St. Lawrence, Berkshire, England
• Died: December 22, 1767
• Place of death: London, England

Newbery was the first to make the writing and sale of books especially targeted to children an important branch of the book trade.

Early Life

As is the case with many eighteenth century individuals, John Newbery’s date of birth is not known; his baptism, however, was registered in the records of his native parish. The Newberys were a publishing family, although John’s father, Robert Newbery, was a small farmer in Waltham St. Lawrence, Berkshire. The future publisher spent his childhood in his home district, receiving his early education there, an education befitting a farmer’s son. The boy did, however, read widely and thus developed an early appreciation for books.

In 1729, at the age of sixteen, Newbery left home, moving to nearby Reading (about nine miles distant), where he became apprenticed and later assistant to the printer William Carnan, publisher of the Reading Mercury. Carnan died in 1737, leaving his business jointly to his brother and to Newbery, who consolidated his position soon afterward by marrying Carnan’s widow, by whom he was eventually to have three children.

Under Newbery’s direction, the Reading Mercury became one of the leading provincial newspapers of the time, sold in almost fifty markets by 1743. This success might well have been in part the consequence of a tour through parts of England that Newbery had taken in 1740. His diary from this excursion suggests that while he was representing the firm and seeking to promote its business, he was also seeking to learn more about commercial conditions and opportunities. This same journal for the six-week tour indicates the nature of Newbery’s mind, ever alert to new ways to further the firm’s business. He mentions, for example, the idea of issuing two fortnightly items, the Reading Mercury and the Reading Courant, to avoid having to pay the tax on more frequent publications. There is no evidence that this scheme was ever put into operation, but the expansion of the paper’s distribution area within three years of his trip shows how he utilized some of his experiences.

The first book to bear Newbery’s own imprint appeared in 1740, but running a publishing house was not his only occupation. In 1743, Newbery entered into partnership with John Hooper of Reading to sell “female pills.” This later operation suggests the restless nature of Newbery’s mind, one perpetually alert to new money-making possibilities. In fact, throughout his lifetime, he sold Dr. James’ Fever Powders, advertisements and references to which appeared in many of his publications. Indeed, although bookselling remained at all times Newbery’s main interest, a considerable portion of his fortune came from the sale of some thirty patent medicines.

Some contemporary sketches of Newbery have survived, but they are so imprecise that it is impossible to gain a good impression of his physical appearance. More important are the portraits in words left by Samuel Johnson and the poet-historian Oliver Goldsmith. Newbery emerges as a simple, jolly, resourceful, and ever-busy individual without time to pay attention to his somewhat shabby and mud-spattered clothing, a portly man nearly overwhelmed with increasing business commitments but always eager to have still more of them. It was this eagerness that led him to move to London in 1744.

Life’s Work

John Newbery moved to London in 1744, initially running a warehouse before moving to the Bible and Sun publishers at St. Paul’s Churchyard in 1745. He was to have twenty-three years of hard-earned prosperity in the nation’s capital. Newbery was now managing a prosperous, many-faceted company; publishing was joined with the selling of various patent medicines, especially the aforementioned fever powder, in which Newbery held a half interest. Already, however, the major thrust of his talents was in the writing and publication of books for children’s amusement and instruction, for which there was an increasing demand in eighteenth century England, especially at Christmastime.

Although Newbery was best known and remembered as the publisher of children’s books, that was not his only literary undertaking. After the move to London, he continued his association with newspapers of both London and the provinces, employing many eminent authors. By the end of the 1740’s, Newbery was associated with many of the leading literary figures of the day. Johnson borrowed money from Newbery, Goldsmith was also in the publisher’s debt financially and otherwise, and Christopher Smart married one of his stepdaughters in 1753, a year after a volume of the poet’s works had been published. In 1758, he started The Universal Chronicle or Weekly Gazette, in which Johnson’s The Idler (1758-1760) first appeared; later, he issued Johnson’s The Rambler (1750-1752) and Lives of the Poets (1779-1781). In 1760, Newbery issued the inaugural edition of the Public Ledger, in which Goldsmith’s The Citizen of the World first appeared, maintaining a publishing association established as early as 1757 and continued into the future, for Newbery was the first publisher of Goldsmith’s The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), in which a flattering portrait of the printer appears.

Newbery was the first English publisher to profit from the publication and sale of books written especially for children. His first testing of this market came in 1744 with the publication of A Little Pretty Pocket-Book. In this work can be seen the characteristics of Newbery’s approach to business. He rejected the cheap and drab appearance of earlier chapbooks, setting a high standard for appearance and quality. At all times he was concerned about details. He went to the expense of copperplate engravings to illustrate the books; the title pages had charm even if they were not spectacular in terms of typography. Binding also received careful attention; A Little Pretty Pocket-Book was covered in gilt and embossed papers that were to be a mark of Newbery’s taste for the remainder of his life. These same publications indicate Newbery’s business acumen. In one of his advertisements he states, “The books are given away, only the binding is to be paid for,” and the cost was only sixpence. A Little Pretty Pocket-Book suggests another of the approaches meant to increase purchases. For an additional two pence, the purchaser of the book could acquire a pincushion for a daughter or a ball for a son.

This initial venture into children’s literature enjoyed tremendous success and was followed by many additional titles. Some were meant to amuse; others, such as Circle of the Sciences: Writing (1746), and Circle of the Sciences: Arithmetic (1746) were to teach. Newbery tried a children’s magazine, The Lilliputian, but that was one of his rare failures. Other works from the Newbery press offered the young (adolescent) mind exposure to contemporary ideas. The Newtonian System of Philosophy Adapted to the Capacities of Young Gentlemen, and Ladies… by Tom Telescope (1761; better known as Tom Telescope) made available to the young reader the scientific ideas of Sir Isaac Newton. The authorship of this work, as in the case of many of the children’s books, is in doubt; some suggest that Goldsmith wrote Tom Telescope—the same suggestion is made for The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes (1766)—while others believe that Newbery himself penned the book.

Tom Telescope was a book for children, but it provides the modern historian with novel insight into how the ideas of the Enlightenment were disseminated throughout society. In its publication history, Tom Telescope also reveals other aspects of Newbery’s usual approach to business. The initial printing of 1761 was a small one, merely enough to test the market. The book’s immediate success mandated a new and much larger edition this same year; a third edition emerged in 1766, a fourth in 1770, and at least ten by 1800. There is almost no way to ascertain the size of individual printings or to identify the number of copies sold. J. H. Plumb estimates conservatively that between twenty-five thousand and thirty thousand copies of Tom Telescope were sold between 1760 and the end of the century and that an edition of ten thousand was issued of the ever-popular A Little Pretty Pocket-Book. As a result of Newbery’s methods of operation, there are very few first editions of his works extant; frequently, the earliest surviving copies are from second or third printings.

Newbery’s peak as a publisher lasted from the time of the opening of his shop in St. Paul’s Churchyard in 1744 until the year of his death, 1767. He died at the age of fifty-four and was buried in the town of his birth. The business was continued at first by his son and a nephew, both named Francis Newbery, and then by the nephew’s widow until 1801. None of these publishers, however, was the equal of his forebear, John Newbery.

Significance

The career and achievement of John Newbery may be analyzed from several perspectives. The most obvious is his role as the first successful seller of books especially aimed at the children’s market. It is therefore appropriate that the American Library Association since 1922 has bestowed annually the Newbery Award to the author of the outstanding book published in the area of children’s literature.

On a related level, Newbery is worthy of study as an illustration of the increasing entrepreneurial ingenuity that was necessary to survive in the commercialized market of England. The land had become increasingly wealthy, and there was more leisure time for relatively well-to-do members of the middle class—Newbery’s market. The middle class was now in a position to spend not only more money on its children but also more time with them. Newbery was shrewd enough to realize that and to enter the business on the ground floor. England’s wealth was merely a single facet of the greater sophistication of the publishing industry at large, a market made possible by the growing literacy of the population.

There is yet another path to follow in connection with Newbery’s place in history, the implementation of the educational theories of John Locke in his Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693). In these informal letters, Locke speaks almost for the first time in modern history about children as children rather than miniature adults, suggesting new ways for parents to act toward their children. Rather than considering children as wild animals to be tamed, Locke tells his readers that children are humans who should be treated as rational creatures and allowed their freedom and liberty, a freedom and liberty appropriate to their age. Locke urged his readers to allow them to be children, allow them to play games, and accept that they have short attention spans and that variety and change delight and occupy their young minds; encourage their curiosity, he argued, but do not seek to satisfy it by pouring into their heads the accumulated wisdom of the elder generation. Perhaps consciously and perhaps unconsciously, what Newbery did was to provide materials, the books for children, that put Locke’s advice into operation. His materials amused, entertained, and challenged, but more than that, they taught to the young of the land, especially those between the ages of twelve and fourteen, the knowledge of the times.

Bibliography

Darton, F. J. Harvey. Children’s Books in England: Five Centuries of Social Life. 3d ed. Revised by Brian Alderson. London: British Library. Devotes one chapter to Newbery, relating him and his works to the social milieu of the eighteenth century.

McKendrick, Neil, John Brewer, and J. H. Plumb. The Birth of Consumer Society. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982. Plumb’s two chapters, “Commercialization of Leisure” and “The New World of Children,” while discussing Newbery the publisher, are much more concerned with placing him and his achievements within the context of commercial and attitudinal changes in eighteenth century England.

Meigs, Cornelia, et al. A Critical History of Children’s Literature. 1953. Rev. ed. London: Macmillan, 1969. Meigs, who wrote the chapter concerned with Newbery, suggests the significance of the Lockean revolution in changing attitudes toward children.

Muir, Percy. English Children’s Books, 1600 to 1900. New York: Praeger, 1954. Muir challenges Newbery’s claim to discovering and satisfying the children’s literature market.

Noblett, William. “John Newbery: Publisher Extraordinary.” History Today 22 (April, 1972): 265-271. A brief but comprehensive article on Newbery’s career, emphasizing the publishing side.

Townsend, John Rowe, ed. John Newbery and His Books: Trade and Plumb-Cake Forever, Huzza! Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1994. Essays summarizing Newbery’s life and achievements as a publisher and bookseller.

Welsh, Charles. A Bookseller of the Last Century, Being Some Account of the Life of John Newbery. London: Griffith, Farran, Okeden and Welsh, 1885. Reprint. London: Augustus M. Keeley, 1972. Welsh was essentially Newbery’s literary executor, being a partner in the firm that succeeded in the nineteenth century to John Newbery’s operation. This biography is primarily responsible for establishing Newbery’s claim to primacy in discovering the children’s market. Useful, also, for a listing of books published by Newbery.