A History of Advertising from the Earliest Times.

Long before advertising was blamed on the digital age, it was thriving in ancient Rome and medieval marketplaces. Henry Sampson's 1874 survey traces the craft of persuasion from Greek town criers to Georgian newspapers, revealing that the techniques we consider modern inventions had vigorous life centuries before Mad Men. Through curious specimens, anecdotes, and biographical sketches of early advertising pioneers, Sampson demonstrates that the fundamental impulse to shout 'buy this' has always been woven into commercial life. The book serves as a corrective to the forgetting that afflicts every generation: we imagine ourselves as the originators of something ancient. For historians of media, business scholars, or anyone curious about how commerce actually works across centuries, this remains a fascinating artifact of early advertising scholarship and a reminder that the selling of things is among humanity's oldest professions.