Gendered Strategies for Success in the Early Nineteenth-Century Literary Marketplace: Mary Carr and the Ladies' Tea Tray

Abstract

In April 1815 Mary Clarke Carr submitted an insolvency petition to the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas. The petition described how Carr had failed to take in the subscription monies owed for her magazine, The Intellectual Regale, or Ladies' Tea Tray, “and lost thereby at least $200 … the receipts not being sufficient for the support of herself and family.” As a consequence of her debts, Carr was forced to sell the rights to the magazine, along with “printing press types, printing apparatus, paper and all … & every other thing &c pertaining to the said ‘establishment.’” After collecting $256 from printer Thomas Smith in exchange for her property, Carr continued to struggle with her magazine for more than a year.