Buying into the World of Goods: Early Consumers in Backcountry Virginia

Buying into the World of Goods: Early Consumers in Backcountry Virginia
by Ann Smart Martin
Hardcover $55.00

Reconstructing the world of one upper Shenadoah Valley country merchant, John Hook from 1760 to 1810, Martin reveals how the acquisition of consumer goods created and validated a set of ideas about taste, fashion, and lifestyle in a particular place at a particular time. Her analysis of Hook's account ledger illuminates the everyday wants, transactions, and tensions recorded within and brings some of Hook's customers to life: a planter looking for just the right clock, a farmer in search of nails, a young woman and her friends out shopping on their own, and a slave woman choosing a looking glass.
This innovative approach melds fascinating narratives with sophisticated analysis of material culture to distill large abstract social and economic systems into intimate triangulations among merchants, customers, and objects. Martin finds that objects not only reflect culture, they are the means to create it.
Ann Smart Martin is a long time researcher of American consumerism and a personal favorite of Burnley and Trowbridge for her accurate and insightful grasp of the textile and fashion market of 18th century America.