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<i>Isaac Collins: A Quaker Printer in 18th Century America</i> (review)

1969; Volume: 58; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/qkh.1969.0011

1934-1504

Willman Spawn,

Religion, Gender, and Enlightenment

Book Reviews51 participated in a number of other reform movements, most importantly for better labor conditions and the betterment of the factory system, especially the lot of the women workers. Mr. Wagenknecht seems to find, in the facts of Whittier's life and in his firm if gentle determination to adjust his faith to the enlarging responsibilities of the tempestuous society, the image of a new—or revived—type of Friend, deeply concerned with society and the enlargement of the field of Faith. In his engagement with such issues and the advancement of science and thought, Whittier was the prototype of the twentieth-century Friend. The last two chapters of this book, dealing with social involvement and "the light that is light indeed," are the most original contribution and more scrupulously documented than any earlier treatment. Their light reaches backward to confirm and clarify the earlier, more factual chapters. They contribute most to the image of Whittier as the pioneer of today's Quaker activist; they are the part of the book in which Friends will find the greatest interest. University of PennsylvaniaSculley Bradley Isaac Collins: A Quaker Printer in 18th Century America. By Richard F. Hixson. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. 1968. 241 pp. $8.00. Mr. Hixson, a professor of journalism at Rutgers, claims in his Introduction that "The career of Isaac Collins constitutes an important part of the early history of printing, publishing, and journalism in the Middle States." This is true; it seems regrettable that the work under review should fall so short of its potential. Mr. Hixson calls his work a biography, but it is primarily a study of Collins' business career. The known facts of Collins' personal life are few and Mr. Hixson has recorded them all, yet he cannot make his subject come to life. The first and last chapters ("Apprentice" and "A Family Business") are the least well-done, the former flawed by awkward writing, padding, and errors, the latter by a catchall quality as some forty years of family history are compressed into a few pages of names, addresses, and dates. Once he is past Collins' earliest years and the establishment of his shop at Burlington in 1770, Mr. Hixson seems on firmer ground. His chapters on Collins' newspaper, the New-Jersey Gazette, and his quarto Bible of 1791 are informative and useful (while a bit drawn-out). He has drawn on the obvious sources and cited them fully, and he has provided a chronological list of Collins imprints, including broadsides and government publications. If he had published his research as a long article on Collins as a printer, Mr. Hixson might well have made an important contribution to the history of American printing. The decision to expand the work into a full-length book has led him into needless error, for the descriptive passages, comparisons, and quotations which pad out the text are sometimes naive, sometimes poorly chosen, sometimes wrong or at least indicative of little knowledge of eighteenth-century printing 52Quaker History practices. For example, the quotation "twenty to twenty-five shillings per sheet, or page" on page 37 confuses two very specific technical terms (sheet and page). A description of Philadelphia in 1767 based on William Birch's Views of Philadelphia published in 1802 seems ill-advised, in view of the tremendous growth and change in the city after the Revolution. As for the Quaker background, Mr. Hixson puts his foot wrong at the beginning. He includes "Thomas Godfrey, the inventor, and Benjamin West, the painter" in a brief list of prominent Philadelphia Quakers of 1767; neither man was then a Friend, and in fact Godfrey had died in 1749, and West gone abroad to study in 1760, never to return. A few pages on, the Yearly Meeting for Pennsylvania and New Jersey is "the policymaking body of the Quakers in the Middle Colonies," ignoring the fact that there were Yearly Meetings in New York, Maryland, and Virginia. Fortunately, the details of Collins' disownment and re-instatement by Burlington Monthly Meeting are given correctly, but the earlier errors do not create confidence in the reader. The book is neither good Quaker biography nor a scholarly contribution to the...