Below is a short bibliography of selected resources related to eighteenth-century periodicals, reading practices, and print networks in the eighteenth-century. These resources are designed to help you continue learning about Washington’s passion for newspapers and the history of The Bee. Where possible, we have provided links to free digital resources that you can access at home.
And if you haven't listened, be sure to check out Episode Two of The Secrets of Washington's Archives, where we chat about Elizabeth Powel and her friendship with George Washington.
Primary Sources
“From George Washington to Elizabeth Willing Powel, 25 January 1795,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-17-02-0293.
“From George Washington to James Anderson (of Scotland), 20 June 1792,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-10-02-0310.
“From George Washington to James Anderson (of Scotland), 26 May 1794,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-16-02-0107.
“From George Washington to James Anderson, 25 April 1793,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-12-02-0379.
“From George Washington to Mathew Carey, 25 June 1788,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/04-06-02-0317.
“From George Washington to the Earl of Buchan, 20 June 1792,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-10-02-0311.
“From George Washington to the Earl of Buchan, 22 April 1793,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-12-02-0369.
“Washington Letters: The Recent Valuable Discovery of the Lewis Family,” Philadelphia Times, November 23, 1890, p. 14.
Anderson, James. Prospectus of an intended new periodical work, to be called The bee, or universal literary intelligencer. To be published weekly; ... Edinburgh: printed by Mundell and Son, [1790].
The Press in Early America
Adelman, Joseph M. Revolutionary Networks: The Business and Politics of Printing the News, 1763–1789. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019.
Clark, Charles E. The Public Prints: The Newspaper in Anglo-American Culture, 1665-1740. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1994.
Gardiner, Jared. The Rise and Fall of Early American Magazine Culture. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. 2012.
Haveman, Heather A. Magazines and the Making of America: Modernization, Community, and Print Culture, 1741-1860. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015.
Tyler, Moses Coit. The Literary History of the American Revolution, 1763-1783. New York: Burt Franklin, 1970.
Women’s Reading Practices
Aronson, Amy Beth. “Domesticity and Women’s Collective Agency: Contribution and Collaboration in America’s First Successful Women’s Magazine.” American Periodicals 11 (2001): 1–23. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20771136.
Brayman Hackel, Heidi and Catherine E Kelly. Reading Women: Literacy, Authorship, and Culture in the Atlantic World, 1500-1800. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008.
Kelley, Mary. “‘The Need of Their Genius’: Women’s Reading and Writing Practices in Early America.” Journal of the Early Republic 28, no. 1 (2008): 1–22. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30043565.
---Learning to Stand & Speak : Women, Education, and Public Life in America's Republic. Chapel Hill: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 2006.
Kerrison, Catherine. “The Novel as Teacher: Learning to Be Female in the Early American South.” The Journal of Southern History 69, no. 3 (2003): 513–48. https://www.jstor.org/stable/30040009
St. George, Robert Blair. “Reading Spaces in Eighteenth Century New England,” in Gender, Taste, and Material Culture in Britain and North America, 1700-1830, ed. John Styles and Amanda Vickery. New Haven: Yale Center for British Art, 2006.
