Neige

1900 · réf. 13367 — Various locations in Connecticut New Jersey and Massachusetts 1900. Forty-one total issues most folded sheets some in wrappers some bound into boards detailed as below plus a folder of ephemeral items. Overall very good condition. An unprecedented collection of amateur journalism encompassing the career of William G. Snow 1863-1945 a prominent amateur editor publisher and printer who worked mostly in New England. Snow was born and died in Meriden Connecticut and in-between lived in New Jersey New York and Massachusetts. During his professional life Snow worked at a print shop in Hartford a dry goods commission house in New York and a lumber company in Massachusetts. When he returned to Meriden he served as the sales and advertising manager of the Meriden Britannia Company and its successor the International Silver Company. Snow's passion however was not in his professional work but rather his decades of work in amateur journalism. The present collection spans as far as we can tell his entire career as a creator of amateur magazines and includes the following: 1 The Penny Post. Vol. 1 No. 1. West Meriden CT: April 1877. 4pp. on a single folded sheet. Even toning minor wear. Very good. A very crude and unrecorded amateur magazine that was likely Snow's first attempt at the hobby. He would have been thirteen or just turned fourteen at the time of its publication. The first page contains some notices and part of a story called "The Frogs Picnic" which ends abruptly. The inner two pages contain the same price list for some address cards and the last page also advertises cards and other job print items. The small masthead indicates the magazine is "A Four Eight Column Amateur Paper" which is "Devoted to the interests of all classes." 2 Every Month bound with: Pen and Press. West Meriden CT: 1878-1879. Fifteen issues each between 4 and 8 pages bound together in contemporary tan paper-covered boards calf backstrip. A rare collection gathering all twelve of Snow's Every Month first two issues titled The Every Month and the only three issues of his first attempt at Pen and Press. The twelve-issue run of Every Month was published between April 1878 and March 1879. Snow then retitled the magazine Pen and Press publishing three issues between October 1879 and February 1880 as volume two with the subtitle "Formerly 'Every Month.'" He would have been fifteen and sixteen at the time he printed these publications. Every Month is held by just four institutions in OCLC Connecticut Museum of Culture & History Connecticut State Library the University of Georgia and AAS while OCLC records just two institutional holdings of Pen and Press at the University of Georgia and AAS. 3 The Sun. West Granville MA: 1880-1881. Nineteen issues most issues between 6 and 8 pages plus a one-page Supplement. A complete run of one of Snow's better-known amateur periodicals which he published at the tender age of seventeen after his family moved to Massachusetts. This paper is sometimes referred to in the amateur journalism hobby as The Granville Sun including in the typed history of the paper affixed to the front pastedown here. This history which is illustrated with a faded photograph of the house in which the Snows lived in West Granville Massachusetts where the paper was also printed was probably compiled by William Snow's son Glover Snow himself an amateur journalist. Another typed notice dated in Meriden in 1942 clarifies the seemingly incongruous volume and issue numbers on the issues of The Sun. In short this magazine begins as volume two issue sixteen because it was meant to follow the fifteen issues of Every Month and Pen and Press described above. Besides the first issue The Sun was printed in a much larger and more professional-looking format than Snow's previous work. 4 Pen and Press four issues. Bayonne N.J.: Pen and Press Publishing Co. January to April 1884. 43pp. String bound. An omnibus volume of the first only four issues of Snow's second attempt at Pen and Press this time published as a "Monthly Journal Devoted to Science Literature and Education in Bayonne" after the Snows moved to New Jersey in 1884. In addition to the issues this group includes the wrappers for the third issue. We're not sure how long this publication ran; the only institutional holding in OCLC is at Rutgers which seems to have the second issue only. 5 Our Town. Vol. 1 No. 1. Granville MA: Spring 1889. 3pp. on a single folded sheet. Though there is no publication information given on this amateur magazine we have reason to know it was produced by Snow given its inclusion in a scrapbook of Snow's publications we have also offered. The issue is unusual as it only uses three of the four available pages and has no masthead. It was probably a piece of job printing done by Snow to promote the town of Granville and its surroundings as most of the content implies. The only holding in OCLC is at AAS. 6 Pen & Scissors. Vol. I No. 1. Meriden CT: 1900. Issued by William Snow in September 1900. Snow mentions in a passage about the publication that he produced it out of "a desire to know what the boys of to-day were doing in amateur journalism." We believe this is the only issue of Pen & Scissors produced by Snow and constitutes his last foray into the hobby. His son Glover Atwater Snow would go on to revive Pen & Scissors beginning in 1911. OCLC reports three institutional holdings at the Alexander Turnbull Library in New Zealand NYPL and AAS. 7 Collection of William G. Snow's Job Printing and Ephemeral Items Relating to His Amateur Journalism. The periodicals above are rounded out with a collection of additional materials documenting the amateur journalism and printing career of William G. Snow. This includes a large unrecorded broadside in which Snow pairs his own amateur magazine The Sun with The Rural New Yorker a prominent New York agrarian publication to offer a subscription special; unrecorded prospectus for Snow's last publication Pen & Scissors; four business or calling cards; a few typed documents relating to amateur journalism; ten small broadsides or handbills of job printing advertising events in Meriden Granville or New York; and two pamphlets of job printing unrelated to amateur journalism. unknown