After a struggling start in England, William Parks became a critical figure for both Annapolis and Williamsburg. He provided the southern United States with its first newspapers as well as civic leadership, book printing and selling, paper, and even postal services. Despite Jefferson’s later dismissal of his Williamsburg newspaper as simply a governmental organ, Parks often pushed the limits of what was expected of a public printer, occasionally getting into trouble and confronting the kind of control and censorship that would eventually make evident the need for press freedoms in the new republic. It has often been asserted that, had Parks not died unexpectedly and relatively young, his reputation would have rivaled that of Franklin as a printer, entrepreneur, and man of affairs.
After a struggling start in England, William Parks became a critical figure for both Annapolis and Williamsburg. He provided the southern United States with its first newspapers as well as civic leadership, book printing and selling, paper, and even postal services. Despite Jefferson’s later dismissal of his Williamsburg newspaper as simply a governmental organ, Parks often pushed the limits of what was expected of a public printer, occasionally getting into trouble and confronting the kind of control and censorship that would eventually make evident the need for press freedoms in the new republic. It has often been asserted that, had Parks not died unexpectedly and relatively young, his reputation would have rivaled that of Franklin as a printer, entrepreneur, and man of affairs.
William Parks: The Colonial Printer in the Transatlantic World of the Eighteenth Century
232William Parks: The Colonial Printer in the Transatlantic World of the Eighteenth Century
232Paperback
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9780271052120 |
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Publisher: | Penn State University Press |
Publication date: | 03/15/2016 |
Series: | Penn State Series in the History of the Book , #18 |
Pages: | 232 |
Product dimensions: | 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d) |