Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Early Mormonism and the Magic World View/Use of sources/Book peddlers

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Peddlers of occult books on the frontier?


A work by author: D. Michael Quinn
 Jugglers or conjurors?

The Claim

Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, page 21

  • In an effort to show that books on magic were readily available on the frontier, the author makes some estimates. After estimating that a single book peddler "was selling about 25,000 books to farmers each year," the author then concludes that "by the early 1800’s there were thousands of peddlers."
  • The author also claims that “‘some peddlers also stocked clandestine works’” and that therefore, “if local stores would not supply occult publications to American farmers, book peddlers were there to fill the need.”

The References

Endnote 192-195 , page 376

  • James S. Purcell, “A Book Pedlar’s [sic] Progress in North Carolina,” North Carolina Historical Review 29 (January 1952): 15.
  • "Just received at the Rochester Book-Store," Western Farmer (Palmyra, NY), 31 July 1822.
  • J. R. Dolan, The Yankee Peddlers of Early America (New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1964) 81.
  • William J. Gilmore, “Peddlers and the Dissemination of Printed Material in Northern New England, 1780–1840,” in Peter Benes, ed., Itinerancy in New England and New York: The Dub;in Seminar for New England Folklife Annual Proceedings 1984 (Boston: Boston University Press, 1986), 80.

The Problems

Were all peddlers book peddlers?

The author miscites his source, doubles the cited figure, and conflates book peddlers with all peddlers.

"Quinn seriously misrepresents his sources. First, he does not inform us of the semantic shift from book peddlers to peddlers of all types. It is true that there were thousands of peddlers in the United States during the early nineteenth century, but book peddlers were only a small portion of this number...Quinn's source for the claim that "one peddler was selling about 25,000 books to farmers each year" (p. 21) is an article by James Purcell. Here is what Purcell actually wrote: "During the years 1809 and 1810 he [Weems, a book peddler] sold $24,000 worth of books for him [publisher Mathew Carey] in the South." Note how the two years' worth of sales clearly described in Purcell's article is transformed by Quinn into a single year's sales: "selling about 25,000 books to farmers each year." Quinn thus magically doubles the actual book sales." [1]

Were "occult texts" being made easily available?

The book also asserts that Weems was selling these volumes "door-to-door in the rural areas of the South" to individual "farmers." The author attempts to portray a wholesaler supplying multiple bookstores as representative of one of thousands of wandering book peddlers. He again seeks to bolster his absurd claim that multiple occult texts were easily available in New England in the 1800s.

“Nothing could be further from the truth. Does Quinn really think that a single peddler, working door-to-door with nineteenth-century transportation, could carry and deliver 25,000 books to backwoods farmers in a single year? This would require selling nearly 2,100 books a month, or carrying and selling almost seventy books a day by a single salesman going door-to-door in rural farm country. In reality, in modern terminology Weems was a regional sales representative for Philadelphia bookseller Mathew Carey and others. His itinerary largely focused on selling to local booksellers." [2]

Were "clandestine" books actually about the occult?

The author again distorts his source—there was a market for pornography, which is hardly surprising. This does not mean that there was a market for expensive occult books.

"Is there any indication of what Gilmore (the author Quinn quotes) meant by the term clandestine? Indeed there is. He meant illegal pornography, as is made quite clear in his article. Nowhere in Gilmore's article is there a single mention of a peddler selling occult books." [3]

== Notes ==

  • [note] William J. Hamblin, "That Old Black Magic (Review of Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, revised and enlarged edition, by D. Michael Quinn)," FARMS Review of Books 12/2 (2000): 225–394. [{{{url}}} off-site], p. 38.
  • [note] William J. Hamblin, "That Old Black Magic (Review of Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, revised and enlarged edition, by D. Michael Quinn)," FARMS Review of Books 12/2 (2000): 225–394. [{{{url}}} off-site], p. 39.
  • [note] William J. Hamblin, "That Old Black Magic (Review of Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, revised and enlarged edition, by D. Michael Quinn)," FARMS Review of Books 12/2 (2000): 225–394. [{{{url}}} off-site], p. 41.

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