Moses Dresser Phillips in Worcester

Moses Dresser Phillips

Lincoln, William. History of Worcester, Massachusetts

Moses relocates to Worcester, a more urban area in Central, Massachusetts, in September of 1832 and apprentices in bookstore of Clarendon Harris. He is following in the footsteps of his father, Daniel, who also worked in Worcester during his young adulthood. After gaining valuable experience in the book trade during his time with Harris, Moses moves his career forward. In 1835, he joins with William Lincoln, a prominent Worcester citizen, to form Moses D. Phillips and Company booksellers. They move into the Lincoln House Block, at the corner of Main and Maple Streets, the former site of the Sanford-Sawtelle Co. bookstore. Together, they publish Lincoln's History of Worcester. Phillips is a retail bookseller, a book jobber, and a small-scale publisher with both urban and rural customers. In addition, he is librarian for the Worcester Lyceum library. During this early part of his career, Moses gains experience in understanding public taste through both bookstore and library patrons.

John Milton

Benjamin Franklin

Lydia H. Sigourney

Edward Young

Maria Edgeworth, Tales and Novels. Vols. I and II. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1835.

By August of 1837, Phillips is in business alone. Like his peers, Moses advertises in newspapers:

“Milton’s Poetical Works,” “Life and Works of

Shakespeare,”“Life and Works of Franklin,” “Young, Gray,

Collins, Coleridge, Hemans, Sigourney, & Gould’s poetical

Works,” “Johnson’s Life and Writings,” “Novels and Tales

by Maria Edgwort,” “Jefferson’s Life and Correspondence,”

“Canning’s Select Speeches,” “Phillip’s, Curran’s, Grattan’s

and Emmett’s Speeches,” “Library of American Biography”

in seven volumes, “Spurzheim, Combe, and Jones’ Works

on Phrenology,” “Prior’s Life of Goldsmith,” “Irving’s Life of

Columbus,” “Scott’s Bible cheap”; “Doddridge’s Family

Expositor,” Barnes’s “Notes on the Gospel - Acts and

Romans”; “Ripley’s Notes on the Bible,” and the “Family

Library in 81 volumes.”

Phillips ad in August 30, 1837 issue of Worcester Republican, reprinted in John Nelson, The Big Town Stores A Century Ago, Worcester County: A Narrative History. Vol. II (New York: The American Historical Society, Inc., 1934), 417-418.

Harper and Brothers of New York, an established firm known for its numerous cheap publications, is the publisher of many of these works. Using the Harper imprints, almost half of which were stereotyped by the mid-1830s, as a model, Phillips can observe the genres and physical structures of books offered, the most frequent prices the books are sold at, and the most popular items.

Of the Harper imprints included in the advertisement, Washington Irving’s abridged Life of Christopher Columbus, for instance, sells for seventy-five cents. British author Maria Edgeworth’s Tales and Novels are available by individual 12mo cloth volume at seventy-five cents, or as a ten volume 12mo cloth set at seven dollars and fifty cents. The Family Library in 81 volumes refers to the Harper Family Library, a numbered set of histories, biographies, travel narratives, and philosophical works.

What genres are these books?

M. D. Phillips & Co. Bookstore Advertisement in Worcester Republican, August 30, 1837.

Distribution of Titles By Genre

N=123 Percentage

Biography/Autobiography 44 37.6%

Description/Travel 13 11.1%

Essays 15 12.8%

Fiction 1 0.9%

History 22 18.8%

Miscellaneous 1 0.9%

Poetry 8 6.8%

Religion 5 4.3%

Science 8 6.8%

TOTALS 117 100%

The experience with book selection and popular taste Moses gains during his retail work in Worcester will carry over to his later career. His Boston firm eventually publishes numerous works in series format, including a famous series of Shakspeare’s works. The later firm also publishes writings by and/or about a number of the male (Milton, Franklin, Combe, Young, Gray, and Collins) and female (Hemans, Sigourney, and Gould) authors listed in his 1837 advertisement.

In addition to his active professional life, Moses has a busy personal life. He marries Charlotte Foxcroft, a Worcester native from a prominent family. Moses chooses a partner who loves learning and sharing knowledge with others, a confident woman who knows about striking out on one's own. Prior to her marriage, Charlotte has attended her cousin Catherine Fiske's Young Ladies' Academy in Keene, New Hampshire before embarking on her teaching career. Surely, Moses is aware that Charlotte has taught at that academy and that she has spent over a year teaching in rural Vermont. Fortunately for Moses, Charlotte has returned to Worcester during the time that he has been there. After their marriage, they live in Worcester and start their family. Their oldest daughter, Catherine Fiske Phillips, is named after Charlotte's cousin and teaching role model.

To learn more about Burton, please click on the title page.

This Voyant word cloud previews the topics in White Slavery: A New Emancipation Cause, Presented to the People of the United States. To read the text itself, please click on the word cloud and select the link in the Source area.

In 1839, Moses publishes Warren Burton's White Slavery. His Co-publishers for this book are Boston publishers C. C. Little & Co. and B. B. Mussey.

While selling and publishing books in Worcester, Moses also acts as local agent for Brandreth’s Vegetable Universal pills. Dr. Benjamin Brandreth, a New York physician and manufacturer, is conducting an aggressive newspaper advertising campaign for his vegetable purgatives. Instead of pharmacists, Brandreth utilizes booksellers as his agents.

Brandreth’s advertisement in the Massachusetts Spy indicates his large distribution network:

The Pills are sold at 25 Cents per Box, at 241 Broadway, New York; at my New England Office,10 HANOVER STREET, BOSTON. And by 20,000 Agents in the United States and Canada, whose certificates and Pills should be carefully examined before a purchase is made.

• M. D. PHILLIPS

Is my agent for Worcester, and has the genuine Brandreth Pills, wholesale and retail. Buy of no others in Worcester.

Massachusetts Spy, 26 January, 1842, p. 4, col. 3.

By watching and learning from entrepreneurs such as Brandreth, Phillips gains valuable experience in marketing, advertising, and distribution of goods on a large scale. Selling pills also provides Phillips and other members of the book trade with a secure business opportunity that could help to support their publishing ventures. As H.O. Houghton later recalled:

“It is only a few years since, not only in country towns but in the cities, that pills and poetry, essences and essays, drugs and dramas, were distributed over the same counter and by the same hands. In the process of natural selection it was, perhaps, logical that a decoction of poetry should be followed by a purgative of pills. The publisher of the first collected edition of the works of our revered poet was also the vender of Brandreth’s pills. He made a fortune, and I leave you to infer whether it was from the pills or the poetry.”

J.C. Derby, Fifty Years with Authors and Publishers, 282

Human Magnetism: Its Origin, Progress, Philosophy and Curative Qualities, With Instruction for its Application

Phillips continues his ties to the health field in 1843, publishing Jacob Baker’s Human Magnetism, a book on the popular topic of magnetic healing. Selling a variety of items might profit entrepreneurs such as Phillips by merging customers of different types of products into one location. People coming into the bookstore for pills will notice books and items such as paper hangings for sale at the Phillips bookstore in Worcester' Brinley Block, while those looking for books might select from the easily accessible health products.

Good health is on Moses's mind, as he and Charlotte have suffered the loss of young Catharine and are nurturing their baby son, John. Charlotte's mother, also named Charlotte, suffers from tuberculosis, known as consumption during Moses's lifetime.