Wade Auction Notice (1841)

Many an early newspaper establishment doubled as a general printing office as well as wholesale and retail stationers and booksellers. Broadsheets, bills, tickets and other items of everyday printed life helped to keep printers in business, particularly when rival newspapers with competing political agenda and limited access to advertising revenue threatened their ongoing financial viability. This auction notice features a printer's standard stock-in-trade of fat face wooden type for the eye-catching title. Of note is the listing of books for sale by their format size plus "a valuable Mahogany bookcase." It was common for gentlemen to sell off their libraries before returning overseas and since books were a scarce commodity in the newly-founded colony, such auctions must have been lively affairs.