Booksellers' announcements, however, are not too frequent in Boston
papers, and are noticeably lacking in the early issues of the
Philadelphia "Weekly Mercury." This dearth of book-news accounts for the
difficulty experienced by book-lovers of that town in procuring
literature--a lack noticed at once by the wide-awake young Franklin upon
his arrival in the city, and recorded in his biography as follows:

"At the time I established myself in Pennsylvania [1728] there was not a
bookseller's shop in any of the colonies to the southward of Boston. In
New York and Phil'a the printers were indeed stationers; they sold only
paper, etc., ballads, and a few books. Those who lov'd reading were
obliged to send for their books from London."

Franklin undertook to better this condition by opening a shop for the
sale of foreign books. Both he and his rival in journalism, Andrew
Bradford, had stationer's shops, in which were to be had besides "Good
Writing Paper; Cyphering Slates; Ink Powders, etc., Chapmens Books and
Ballads." Bradford also advertised in seventeen hundred and thirty that
all persons could be supplied with "Primers and small Histories of many
sorts." "Small histories" were probably chap-books, which, hawked about
the country by peddlers or chapmen, contained tales of "Fair Rosamond,"
"Jane Grey," "Tom Thumb" or "Tom Hick-a-Thrift," and though read by old
and young, were hardly more suitable for juvenile reading than the
religious elegies then so popular. These chap-books were sold in
considerable quantities on account of their cheapness, and included
religious subjects as well as tales of adventure.

One of the earliest examples of this chap-book literature, thought
suitable for children, was printed in the colonies by the press of