We Invite Your Attention to Our Family Bible

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By: Bradley, Garretson & Co.

Date: August 1874

Source: Library of Congress. "Emergence of Advertising in America 1850–1920." 2006 〈http://jepoch.dth.jp/ww/scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/eaa/ephemera/A00/A0077/A0077–72dpi.html〉 (accessed June 27, 2006).

About the Author: Bradley, Garretson & Co. was a prominent publishing company based in Philadelphia in the latter part of the nineteenth century. The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world as well as being the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States.

INTRODUCTION

The family Bible has been an institution in the homes of many generations of Christian families since the arrival of the first significant numbers of English colonists in the early part of the seventeenth century. In early colonial times, newspapers were non-existent (the first regularly available colonial newspapers were not published until 1719) and books of any sort were a rare and treasured commodity that were only available if received from Europe. The family Bible was used in a number of ways in a colonial household—as a means of assisting in religious devotions, in the furtherance of Christian education, and as the only source of pleasure reading.

The family Bible acquired an additional status in Victorian times in the United States. In addition to its significance as the most important and the most sacred Christian text, the Bible became an important symbol of family strength and vitality. The Bible was commonly used as a chronicle where the important family events were recorded from generation to generation, including births, baptisms, marriages, and deaths. The entire genealogy of the family was often set out inside the front or back cover of the Bible. Important documents that related to the religious practices of the family, such as the temperance pledges that were common in Protestant households after 1850, were often inserted into the family Bible for posterity. In every respect, the family Bible was regarded and maintained as a symbol of God's presence and protection over the family.

Family Bibles were usually published in a format that gave the book an undeniable heft; by 1874, the family Bible was often the most prized heirloom among the personal possessions of an American family. This 1874 advertisement emphasizes the important distinction between a regular Bible and a family Bible.

Bible publishing became a significant growth industry after 1810 in the United States. The American Bible Society (ABS) was founded in 1816 in New York City to spread the word of God and the Christian faith throughout the world. By the time of the Civil War in 1861, the ABS was distributing its Bible throughout America; Bibles were provided to the soldiers of both the Union and the Confederate armies through the duration of the conflict.

The success of the ABS was an incentive to a number of commercial publishers to manufacture and market their particular style of Bible. There was a high level of religious observance associated with the traditional text, the King James Version, first published in England in 1611. Nineteenth-century commercial publishers such as Bradley, Garretson & Co. did not alter the biblical text but marketed many different physical styles of Bibles. In 1901, the American Standard Version of the Bible was first offered for sale, a version that represented the first attempt in American Bible publishing to market a Bible that utilized contemporary language.

PRIMARY SOURCE

WE INVITE YOUR ATTENTION TO OUR FAMILY BIBLE

See primary source image.

SIGNIFICANCE

The technique employed by the Philadelphia publishers Bradley, Garretson, & Co. in their 1874 advertising circular to attract sales agents to promote and market their new family Bible was reflective of both the times and the product. The modern concept of a "hard sell" would have been inconceivable with respect to almost any commercial goods in 1874, particularly the most revered of published Christian works.

The United States in 1874 was an overwhelmingly Christian nation. The commercial sale of a Bible did not relate to its content because it could not be marketed in any other format except the then standard King James Version. The marketing efforts of a sales agent would be directed to the outward appearance and style of the Bradley, Garretson, & Co. product.

PRIMARY SOURCE

We Invite Your Attention to Our Family Bible: An 1874 advertisement, selling family Bibles, also tries to convince people to buy Bible sales packages and resell them as sales agents. the library of congress.

The advertisement has a measure of subtle evangelism in its words, a tone consistent with an era where the public battles over alcohol and temperance were being led with an evangelical zeal by the Women's Christian Temperance Union and other Protestant forces. Bradley, Garretson, & Co. was not simply seeking a sales agent for their publications, with the opportunity to earn significant commissions—the company sought someone who could awaken a desire for its product in places where a family Bible was not yet found.

The use of commission-based sales agents in the U.S. publishing industry became more common as the geographic extent of the potential market grew. In an era when the only means of communication was by letter or telegraph, publishers could efficiently distribute their products through the creation of agents, each with an assigned geographical territory. The element of trust that existed by necessity between the publishers and the sales agents during the late Victorian era is profound by modern standards: the publisher implicitly trusted the agent to provide an honest accounting of products sold and revenues collected by the agent. A review of the relevant literature and sales records from this period reveals that problems in relation to agent dishonesty rarely occurred. It was a common practice for Bradley, Garretson & Co. to operate with just a verbal agreement with the agents; it seems that there was an understanding by both parties that the agreements regarding the distribution of Bibles needed no further guarantees.

The 1874 advertisement is also significant in that the Bible is the best-selling book in the history of the United States. From a publisher's perspective, the Bible was an attractive publishing proposition because there were no questions regarding copyright and there were no costs associated with translation or other improvements to the text. A quality packaging of the Bible text could lead to significant profits, as the American culture of the period was such that a family that did not have a Bible in their home would be looked upon as almost irreligious.

The business operations of Bradley, Garretson & Co. are also of interest in their own right. The company had offices in various parts of the United States by 1870; it also established a Canadian presence in the Ontario cities of Toronto and Brantford by 1876. This manner of business was significant as a multinational publishing operation, even one that involved the generally neighborly division between the United States and Canada, was highly unusual. Bradley, Garretson & Co. anticipated the international scope of the American publishing industry by several decades.

FURTHER RESOURCES

Books

Brown, Candy Gunther. The Word in the World: Evangelical Writing, Publishing, and Reading in America, 1789–1880. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004.

Gutjahr, Paul. An American Bible: A History of the Good Book in the United States, 1777–1880. Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999.

Nord, David. Faith in Reading: Religious Publishing and the Birth of Mass Media in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Sivulka, Juliann. Soap, Sex, and Cigarettes: A Cultural History of American Advertising. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1997.