Description
Book SynopsisInsecure times strengthened their conviction that writing could be publicly serviceable, persuading readers to invest in their government, in their fellow Americans, and in the idea of America itself.
Trade ReviewA thought-provoking gem of a book... All historians and literary critics with an interest in eighteenth-century economic culture will want to read it. -- Toby L. Ditz William and Mary Quarterly 2006 Baker's argument is instructive and well founded. -- Jonathan M. Chu Journal of American History 2006 Baker has written an incisive, provocative, sparkling book. American Antiquarian Society 2006 Baker brings a fresh and critical eye to works already well-known to specialists but probably unfamiliar to historians in general. Journal of Interdisciplinary History 2007 Astute and surprisingly lively volume... Highly recommended. Choice 2006 A historically astute study of the complex relations between economic culture and literary history in early America. -- Philip Gould Journal of the Early Republic 2007 This is a work that attempts to break new ground. The topic is important but difficult and should be of great interest to historians, economists, and literary critics. -- Max M. Edling New England Quarterly 2007 An incisive new study... Baker conceptualizes her readings in pathbreaking ways. American Literature 2007 Both a primer educating one into the financial thinking of early Anglo-America and a testament to the energy and creativity with which successive generations of provincials imagined commerce as a process of mediation. Early American Literature 2007 Securing the Commonwealth, with its insightful account... offers a cogent and eye-opening narrative of a long-overlooked dimension. -- Edward Larkin Modern Intellectual History 2008 This book's virtue lies in its willingness not to belabor a point, as well as its extremely graceful way of offering correctives to existing readings... To finish an academic monograph wanting to read more is surely a good-and rare-thing. -- Jody Greene American Historical Review 2008 In her elegant analysis of writings by Cotton Mather, Benjamin Franklin, Royall Tyler, Charles Brockden Brown and Judith Sargent Murray, Jennifer Baker homes in on a mode of thinking in eighteenth-century America about debt, credit, speculation and paper money that is quite surprising. -- Peter Knight Journal of American Studies 2008
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction: Castle Building
Part I: New World Ventures
1. Crisis and Faith in the Puritan Society
2. Making Much of Nothing in the Chesapeake
Part II: The Price of Independence
3. Benjamin Franklin's Projections
4. Performing Redemption on the National Stage
Part II: Bonds of the New Nation
5. Arthur Mervyn and the Reader's Investments
6. The Medium between Calculation and Feeling
Epilogue: Headwork, Literary Vocation
Notes
Bibliography
Index
