It is difficult to neatly compartmentalize the myriad ways print impacts our daily lives. Printed tools once found in every home, such as telephone directories, for example, have now been almost completely superseded by ubiquitous internet access. Other items, like direct mail catalogs, persist and flourish—12 billion are mailed annually and 90 million Americans use them every year to purchase items. However, there are many other, less ephemeral, types of printed pieces that serve a useful function in the domestic sphere. Books containing medical advice and other helpful tips have long been produced for household use. Home reference works also included encyclopedias and what could only be described as precursors to another familiar genre, the self-help book. Bound printed materials have a good chance of being preserved and passed along to future generations but less durable ephemera, including magazines, almanacs, trade cards, announcements, and greeting cards were more likely to be discarded. Fortunately, the mass quantities and variety of items ensured the plentiful survival of pre-twentieth-century examples.
John Timbs could serve as the poster child for this entire exhibit. His father was a warehouseman in England who managed to send his son to school. Through an apprenticeship to a chemist and printer in Dorking, Timbs met his mentor, Sir Richard Phillips who set him on the writer’s path, although, technically speaking, he was more of an assembler than a writer. Contemporaries describe him as a “scissors and paste” man, but his heart was in the right place. Timbs simply wanted to inform as many people as possible via low-priced editions of printed books filled with sections on domestic science, zoology, history, the arts, inventions, biography, and much, much more. This multi-part title, like many of his books, was widely available in the United States in the 19th century.
Business directories provide a fascinating glimpse of life at one point in time. Publishers like Mitchell used a familiar business model to produce directories, soliciting ads from local merchants and tradesmen by promising them an extensive circulation which would enlarge their trade. We don’t know how many directories were printed or how many people purchased this directory (prices for other directories sold by Mitchell ranged from $3.00 to $4.00) but it wasn’t produced annually, as promised and only a handful of copies are known today. Perhaps the Civil War disrupted Mitchell’s plans and he left Tennessee. Worldcat database records associate the name, J.L. Mitchell, with an 1862 Canadian railroad gazetteer and an 1874 prospectus for a railway company in Denver.
