Background
Benjamin Harris was born in 1673 in England. Through his father he was descended from Thomas Harris, a brother of the earnest but turbulent William Harris, who was associated with Roger Williams.
journalist publisher writer bookseller
Benjamin Harris was born in 1673 in England. Through his father he was descended from Thomas Harris, a brother of the earnest but turbulent William Harris, who was associated with Roger Williams.
Benjamin Harris began his publishing career by issuing a religious book, War with the Devil, from his shop in Bell Alley in Coleman Street, London, in 1673. Business prospered and during the next six years he published numerous religious books, including attacks against the Catholics and Quakers.
In 1679 he published the first number of Domestick Intelligence: or News both from City and Country, later The Protestant (Domestick) Intelligence, and continued its publication, with several interruptions, until April 15, 1681, when it was finally suppressed. Harris was both its publisher and editor. As Shaftesbury’s campaign progressed Harris became more audacious and in the latter part of 1679 published the Appeal from the Country to the City, a seditious pamphlet written anonymously by Charles Blount. The following February Harris was tried, found guilty, and sentenced by Chief Justice Scroggs to stand in the pillory and pay a fine of £500, in default of which he was sent to King’s Bench Prison. The House of Commons, under Whig influence, petitioned the King for his release, without effect, but in December he was illegally discharged. He celebrated his release by publishing his Triumphs of Justice over Unjust Judges, dedicating it to Scroggs, and resumed his propaganda against the papists.
Harris opened a coffee-house near the Royal Exchange in Cornhill where he sold books, playing cards illustrating all the popish plots, and patent medicines. With the failure of Monmouth’s Rebellion and the accession of James II, he acted with his old audacity and published English Liberties, of which five thousand copies were seized by the authorities. With that he agreed with his Whig friend John Dunton, then in Boston, that Old England was an “uneasy place for honest men, ” and he determined to seek refuge in New England.
Harris arrived in Boston, with his son Vavasour and a stock of books, in the fall of 1686 and opened a shop on the south corner of State and Washington streets. He was surrounded by seven booksellers, but the success of his first publication, John Tulley’s Almanach for 1687, established his position, and on July 12, 1687, he returned to London to see his wife and to secure more books. Returning January 25, 1688, he found that the business had further prospered under Vavasour and that the second issue of Tulley’s Almanach had been published. Meanwhile, in 1687, his estate had been appraised for taxation purposes. In November 1688 he again sailed for London, with Judge Sewall as a fellow passenger. He soon returned and published a profitable edition of the new charter. His shop became known as the London Coffee House and in August 1690 he secured a license to sell “Coffee, Tee and Chucaletto. ” It became a social center, where women could come, though inns were denied them, and among its patrons were the Mathers, who published some of their books with Harris.
On Thursday, September 25, 1690, Harris published Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick. It contained three pages of news, with no advertisements, and was remarkable because the news was chiefly American. Harris had a marked sense of news value and a vigorous style in writing. He had planned to publish the paper monthly, "or if any Glut of Occurrences happen, oftener, ” but the first issue was promptly suppressed by the governor and the council. Four days after the paper’s appearance a broadside proclaimed the “high resentment and Disallowance” of the authorities and forbade any printing without license.
Harris had brought out in London in 1679 The Protestant Tutor, a book designed to teach children spelling, the true Protestant religion, and the iniquities and dangers of the papists. Several similar books had been unsuccessfully published in Boston, perhaps in imitation of the Tutor, but Harris saw the necessity of a radical change, and though he borrowed parts of his Tutor, the New England Primer was a school book for children and not a savage political tract.
During 1690 Harris published at least ten books. The following year he formed a partnership with John Allen, and in 1692 he became the official printer to the governor, a position of influence, though one of difficulty and little profit. In 1693 Green superseded him as official printer and in 1694 he moved from his shop “overagainst the old-Meeting-House” to new quarters “at the Sign of the Bible, over-against the Blew Anchor. ” Having determined to return to London, he went early in 1695, leaving Vavasour, assisted by Allen, to close up his business. His last publication was Tulley’s Almanach for 1695.
In London Harris turned again to journalism and in May 1695 published the first number of Intelligence Domestick and Foreign. This was followed within three months by three newspapers which failed, but on June 6, 1699, he brought out The London Slip of News, both Foreign and Domestick, which, with its second issue, became the London Post and survived exactly six years. He sold it from his shop at the “Golden Boar’s Head, against the Cross Keys in Gracechurch Street, ” along with sermons, books, almanacs, and patent medicines. His frequent quarrels with Dr. John Partridge, whose almanacs he plagiarized, probably attracted the attention of Jonathan Swift and brought about the famous Bickerstaff papers. The London Post ceased publication in 1706 and his last edition of The Protestant Tutor was printed in 1716.
During his eight years in Boston Benjamin Harris established himself as the leading publisher and bookseller of seventeenth-century America. Sometime before 1690 Harris had published The New England Primer, one of the most popular and influential books ever printed in America. In 1690, he published Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick, the first newspaper printed in America
(The following pages, describing the che= quered life of a...)
( The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration...)
(Book Description: "This was a standard reader in New En...)
Himself an Anabaptist, Harris became associated with Shaftesbury and the Whigs and in 1679 joined Titus Oates in exposing the Popish Plot.
