Benjamin Harris

Harris, Benjamin (1673–1716), English-American bookseller and writer, publisher of the first newspaper in America (1690). An Anabaptist and Whig, he left England in 1686 to escape punishment for his written attacks on Roman Catholics and Quakers. In Boston he ran a bookstore and coffeehouse and tried to publish Publick Occurrences, Both Foreign and Domestick, which Boston authorities suppressed after just one issue. He later published The New-England Primer, a speller based on his politically inflammatory textbook, The Protestant Tutor (1679). He returned to London in 1695 and published the London Post 1699–1706.