The Period Press

A publishing house for historical primary documents

Publishing and providing free public access to historical primary documents for education.

Its first imprint, Federalist Reader, is a free reader for all eighty-five Federalist Papers, set as the newspaper serial they first were.

Read the Federalist Papersat federalistreader.org
Title page of The Federalist, second edition, volume one, printed in New-York by George F. Hopkins in 1802, with handwritten ownership inscriptions at the top.
The Federalist, second edition, vol. I. New-York: George F. Hopkins, 1802. Title page.

What we do

The Period Press publishes historical primary documents online and gives the public free access to them, for education. We present each document in an easy-to-read, historically accurate format, and we keep the words as they were.

The Constitution, 1787

The opening of the first printed Constitution: the words We the People of the United States set with a large initial W, followed by the Preamble in eighteenth-century type. Printed by Dunlap and Claypoole, Philadelphia, 1787.
The Constitution, first printing. Dunlap & Claypoole, Philadelphia, 1787. Library of Congress.

Federalist Reader

federalistreader.org

The papers as they first reached readers, in a newspaper serial, with the answers that followed them.

The papers.
Period gazette type, a clean Reader mode one tap away, and short plain-language companion notes.
The answers.
Anti-Federalist essays answering Publius, among them Brutus No. 1 from Thomas Greenleaf’s New-York Journal.
By email.
The papers delivered one a week, or each on the anniversary of its original 1787–88 publication date.
Open Federalist Readerat federalistreader.org

The Federalist, 1788

Title page of The Federalist, first edition, volume one, printed in New-York by J. and A. M'Lean in 1788, with a Library of Congress stamp and handwritten inscriptions.
The Federalist, first edition, vol. I. New-York: J. and A. M'Lean, 1788. Title page.

Colophon

The Period Press, Inc. is a Maryland nonstock nonprofit corporation, approved October 16, 2026.

An application for federal tax exemption is in preparation.

Directors: Vann Walke, President; Tom Hand, Secretary; Peter Bowe, Treasurer.

This site is set in Libre Caslon and IM Fell English.

Documents shown: The Federalist, second edition, 1802, title page; the first printing of the Constitution, Dunlap & Claypoole, 1787, Library of Congress; The Federalist, first edition, 1788, title page; A Specimen by William Caslon, 1734. All are in the public domain.

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Caslon, 1734

The top of William Caslon's 1734 type specimen sheet: the heading A Specimen by William Caslon, Letter-Founder, in Chiswell-Street, London, above columns of roman, italic and other alphabets with sample text in graded sizes.
A Specimen by William Caslon, Letter-Founder, London, 1734.