Talk about hitting the ground running - as you can probably tell from the lack of blog entries, I’ve been unexpectedly rushed off my feet since the New Year. I’ve had a few jobs come in and I’ve also been sorting out my 2005-06 accounts (yes, yes, I know, the deadline’s a full two weeks’ away - I think I’m turning square in my old age.)

I’ve also been much taken up with writing a paper for the M.A. I’m working on. This one was about the early work of Marchamont Nedham (or Needham, 1620-1678), a teacher, doctor, lawyer, spy, agent provocateur, friend of John Milton, the major figure in the early development of English newspapers in the 1640s and 1650s and arguably the first professional copywriter.

He had a quite a busy life.

Nedham’s claim to the latter title is based on the ad space he sold in later editions of Mercurius Politicus, the official newspaper of the Republican government of the 1650s. As well as taking in the ads, Nedham seems to have used his journalistic skills to write the copy for them, too. The Politicus ads weren’t the earliest advertising by any means. They weren’t even the earliest advertising in publications; notices of book releases, for example, had been appearing in the proto-newspapers of the day for a while before Nedham started advertising.

But Politicus was the first print publication to carry ads for commodities and services in a form we’d recognise today. The very first such ad appeared in the weekly issue published on Thursday, September 23, 1658. The ad was for tea, and it looked like this:

Oops, bit of overspill into the margin there. Never mind. If you’re a bit out of practice when it comes to reading seventeeth century newsprint, this is what it says:

That Excellent, and by all Physicians approved, China Drink, called by the Chineans, Tcha, by other Nations Tay alias Tee, is sold at the Sultaness-head, a Gophee-house in Sweetings Rents by the Royal Exchange, London.

That little chunk of copy is the direct ancestor of every newspaper ad, every 468×60 banner, every pay-per-click campaign and every annoying bloody click-here-you’ve-won-another-million-bucks-whoopee-doo pop-up ad since.

And it was flogging tea. Non-British observers are free to conclude that we don’t change very much over here.