Printing persuasion

: early eighteenth-century advertising in provincial England and Dublin

Abstract

In 1695, the Licencing Act which had largely limited English printing to London, Oxford and Cambridge expired. The collapse of England’s London centric censorship laws stimulated the development of the provincial press. Newspaper printers were among the first to take advantage of the lack of government oversight. By the middle of the eighteenth-century, regional newspapers were a common sight in large towns across England. In Ireland, a thriving newspaper press developed in Dublin, as well as key provincial cities including Belfast, Cork and Limerick. In London, rivalry between Tory and Whig factions incentivised politicians to purchase newspapers to further their own political causes. Other titles were subsidised by London booksellers who utilised them as a vehicle to promote their own products.

Provincial newspapers lacked these additional revenue streams. Instead, they relied on the placement of advertisements to enhance the income generated directly from sales, creating a rich source of data through which to understand the retail revolution and provincial culture. Newspaper advertisements are of additional importance as provincial newspapers only infrequently carried regional news. Advertisements were frequently the only source of data provided within provincial newspapers that can provide insight into newspaper readers, printers, advertisers and local communities. This dissertation will proceed by recording and analysing a range of newspaper advertisements placed between the end of the licencing act and 1750.

Chapter 1 analyses book advertisements. The prominence of religious texts as a genre, and relative lack of works on contemporary politics, tells us much about readers in the early portion of the eighteenth-century. In chapter 2, advertisements for retail products and other services are discussed. Higher levels of advertising found to have occurred in coastal communities and those with burgeoning industrial sectors. In chapter 3 the importance of patent medicine is explored. We find evidence for locally sourced medicines, while claims that newspapers were geared towards medicines dealing with venereal disease are refuted. Chapter 4 combines analysis of property advertisements and official notices, advertisements placed by individuals and local authorities whose intention was to inform. The chapter demonstrates how property advertisements provide sources of local news, in addition to demonstrating a continued taste for acquiring large country estates in a world in which luxurious, portable retail items were becoming more commonplace. Chapter 5 deals with lost property and missing people and examines claims that newspaper adverts paved the way for a surveillance state. I demonstrate that advertisements tracked goods and people over large distances, though the fact that adverts monitored thieves and British soldiers deserting in Ireland demonstrate that advertisements did not simply lead to a more oppressive society.

The thesis concludes that advertisements can be broadly placed into two categories: advertisements which advertised products and services and notices placed by individuals and local authorities which were designed to inform. Retail advertisements played a part in advertising the novel goods produced because of the consumer revolution, regional advertisements were also a convenient medium for promoting traditional entertainments, products and agriculture land. The advertising sections of the newspapers reveal a world in which commerciality and advertising was increasingly accepted, but for blood sports and estate sales as much as for patent medicines and the latest books.

Date of Award	3 Dec 2025
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of St Andrews
Supervisor	Andrew Pettegree (Supervisor) & Arthur der Weduwen (Supervisor)