Andrew Bradford: Colonial Journalist (review)

Book Reviews111 an account of the events of George Fox's life, his power, his miracles and testimonies, his missionary efforts, his struggle against the bigotry of the churches, against the perversion of the law, against the schisms in his own ranks, and the building up of the Society of Friends. Fox is regarded with the utmost reverence ("Like the Apostle Paul he entered the capital . . . for the first time as a prisoner" [p. 171]) , but his lack of insight into the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, etc., is freely admitted. On the jacket the book is commended as readable. It is certainly plain. It is also described as being abreast of recent research : why then, though fifty titles appear in the bibliography and fifteen are scattered among the chapter references at the end, does the author quote the Everyman edition of the Journal only? Here are some whimsical errata: Somerseth (p. 187), Gladstonbury (p. 523), Wallingfors (p. 551). We have to grant the claim of "comprehensiveness." However, "less would have been more." Alfons Paquet's slender volume on John Woolman should be re-published as a model of its kind. In our time we need the evidence of power rather than a voluminous and necessarily expensive biography which gathers a lot of dry sticks but fails to leave them burning. Earlham CollegeHans W. Buchinger Andrew Bradford: Colonial Journalist. By Anna Janney DeArmond. Newark, Delaware: University of Delaware Press. 1949. ix, 272 pages. $3.00. A NDREW BRADFORD (1686-1742) was one of the early printers and journalists in colonial Philadelphia, and shared a predominance in the field with Samuel Keimer and Benjamin Franklin. His father, William Bradford, first printer in the colony, arrived in Pennsylvania in 1685 with letters of recommendation from both William Penn and George Fox. Andrew's maternal grandfather was Andrew Sowie, a leading publisher in London. Bradford founded the American Weekly Mercury, in December, 1719, the second newspaper in the British colonies. In 1741 he published the first magazine in America, the American Magazine; or, A Monthly View of the Political State of the British Colonies. It appeared three days before Franklin's General Magazine and lasted for three issues. The author has not written a biography of Bradford, as the title implies. Aside from brief chapters about Bradford and the American Magazine, what she has done is to catalogue the material in the American Weekly Mercury, reclassify it, and print it again, virtually without comment. For example, on page 131 she refers to items in the Mercury 112Bulletin of Friends Historical Association about two "eminent Friends" in Britain, a Mrs. Miller and a Mrs. Drummond. In the first place, women in the Society of Friends are referred to by their first and last names, and secondly, the least that an author can do is to identify persons mentioned; but they are not properly identified, and no reference is given concerning them. Page after page consists of items lifted from the Mercury and set down without being placed in a proper context. The book is magnificently documented (there are ten footnotes for one sentence on page 85), but almost every footnote refers to the Mercury. The bibliography is without organization. All items are thrown together in one alphabetical list. Manuscript collections are printed in italics rather than in roman letters as is customary. The evidence pointing toward a lack of adequate background is apparent in the bibliography as well as the text. There is no Quaker history listed, aside from Friends' Miscellany, although the Friends were paramount in the colony at the time. Many things of interest are culled from the Mercury, such as the long-drawn-out fight between the newspaper and Andrew Hamilton, in which the Pennsylvania Gazette, Franklin's organ, defended the eminent lawyer. In the heat of the struggle, even Hamilton's defense of Peter Zenger in the famous libel trial in New York City was attacked in the Bradford publication. The chapter entitled "The Mercury as a Mirror of the Times" includes many interesting quotations and jottings concerning the contemporary scene. The author tends to emphasize the importance of Bradford to the detriment of Franklin, but that is undoubtedly natural when...