Shortly after the Declaration was approved, Philadelphia printer Robert Bell added pages to the back of a book he was in the process of printing and filled them with the text of the Declaration of Independence. He offered the book──The Genuine Principles of the Ancient Saxon, or English Constitution … with some Observations, on their Peculiar Fitness, for the United Colonies in General, and Pennsylvania in Particular── for sale on July 9. Bell, a Quaker who emigrated to America from Ireland in 1767, was no stranger to printing patriotic books; in 1776, he also published multiple editions of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense.
Publication / Creation Year
1776