"At the Sign of the Bible"

George Whitefield.
Ten Sermons Preached on Various Important Subjects.
Newburyport: Edmund Blunt and Angier March, 1795. (AEZ9728)

The publisher’s advertisement bound into this early American edition of George Whitefield sermons conveys the typical circumstances of Methodist book buying. Whereas the book’s title page records that copies of this title could be bought from booksellers in Boston, Philadelphia, and New York, the advertisement bound at the back of the book indicates that this copy was sold in Newburyport, Massachusetts, by the printers Edmund Blunt and Angier March. Their bookstore, located “at the sign of the Bible, four doors below Mr. Davenport’[s] tavern” at the corner of State Street and Threadneedle Alley, carried “an assortment of books…on almost every subject…as cheap as at any store on the continent.” Both the bookstore and the tavern were destroyed in the great Newburyport fire of May 31, 1811.