time after, the London Gazette, which was the official organ of the day, appeared frequently without a single advertisement; and till the end of the reign of Charles II., it was only very rarely that that paper contained more than four advertisements of a general kind, very frequently the number being less. The subjects of these were almost exclusively thefts, losses, and runaways. Booksellers’ and quacks’ advertisements were, however, even then frequent in this paper; their announcements always preceded the others, and were printed in a different type.
In 1668 Mr (afterwards Sir) Roger L’Estrange commenced the Mercury, or Advertisements concerning Trade, which does not seem to have answered, for it soon became extinct. Some years after, the now well-known scheme of issuing sheets of advertisements gratuitously, trusting for profit to the number of advertisers, was for the first time attempted. The paper started on this principle was called the City Mercury, and appears to have had a hard struggle for existence, since the publishers thought it necessary to insert in No. 52 (March 30, 1673) a notice of this tenor:—
Notwithstanding this paper has been published so long, there are many persons ignorant of the design and advantage of it. And it every week comes to the hand of some, both in City and Country, that never see it before: For which reason the Publisher thinks himself obliged (that all may have benefit by it), to inform them that:—
- He gives away every Monday above a thousand of them to all the Booksellers, shops and inns, and most of the principal coffee-houses in London and Westminster. Besides they are now sent to most of the cities and principal towns in England.
Any person that has anything to insert in it, as the titles of books ,