Probably the similarity in type face, layout, and content has to do with
the similarity of nearly all newspapers of that time.  Always one sheet
folded to make 4 pages, tiny type, mixture of short bits of news, much of
it melodramatic, homilies a la Reader's Digest, bad poetry, jokes ...

Due to the play you mention, or to some previous incarnation of the same
theme, Paul Pry had become a byword meaning, more or less, "Peeping Tom",
or voyeur in some more general sense.

Anne Royal was certainly no Quaker, and if she had letter exchanges with
readers in her paper, her distinctive personality would have shown
through.

If you go to www.altavista.com, and put in "paul pry" (WITH the quotation
marks), you should find 500+ pages, some of which might be useful.

Cheers,

Hal Morris: [log in to unmask]   --  Editor of:
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On Wed, 10 Jan 2001, Honor Conklin wrote:

>    I am trying to locate the publishing history of two, probably related, newspapers.  PAUL PRY (Rochester, NY), 1828  and PAUL PRY WEEKLY BULLETIN (Rochester, NY), 1829.  Does anyone know who published it and have a citation?  Items in the newspaper address "Paul Pry" as Friend.  Might it have a Quaker influence?
>
>    They look similar in type face, layout  and content to Anne Newton Royall's PAUL PRY (Washington, D.C.), 1831.  Of it, James, Bessie. Anne Royall's U.S.A. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers, 1972, p. 312 says: "Meanwhile Anne Royall dashed about picking up a discarded Ramage press and wheedling Duff Green into giving her type discarded by the TELEGRAPH [United States Telegraph (Washington)].    She hired a tramp printer (probably a discard too) and, as was an editorial custom of the day, acquired two orphans as printer's devils. .. A neighborhood 'carrier boy' named the newspaper PAUL PRY."  In Maxwell, Alice and Marion Dunlevy. Virago!: The Story of Anne Newton Royall (1769-1854). Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1985, p. 246 it says:"Mrs Ryall chose the tile PAUL PRY for her weekly national review from an 1825 comedy from the Englishman, John Poole."
>
> Honor Conklin
>