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Copeland, David A. Colonial American Newspapers: Character and Content. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1997. 392 pp. $49.50.
Humphrey, Carol Sue. The Press of the Young Republic, 17831833. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1976. 200 pp. $59.95.
"This Taste, we Englishmen, have for News, is a very odd one; yet it must be fed; and tho' it seems to be a Jest to Foreigners, yet it is an amusement we can't be without," a correspondent wrote in a 1750 issue of the New York Gazette. The taste for news was remarkably strong among early Americans, remaining a consuming passion from the early eighteenth century through the Jacksonian era of the nineteenth century, according to two recent books which explore the content and roles of the early American press.
Indeed, reading the works of David Copeland and Carol Sue Humphrey gives one a clear impression that early Americans were a well-informed and conscientious bunch-more jovial and inquisitive during the colonial era, more grave and intensely political after the Revolution. For them, the newspaper was a political beacon, moral educator, back-fence gossip, and leisure-time amusement. The two books rely on a vast quantity and impressive diversity of primary sources to portray earlyAmerican life as rich, full, and...