The Business of Letter-Writing

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapterpeer-review

Abstract

All basic histories of the United States report that some time in the third decade of the nineteenth century, the nation’s aggregate wealth began to register dramatic gains. A growing inventory of commodities were being shipped in increasing volume, and at decreasing cost, to a growing number of continental and transatlantic destinations, turning the country itself into ‘but one extended [sales] counter from Maine to Texas,’ as Hunt’s Merchant’s Magazine soon quipped.¹ Interlocking divisions of globalizing labor upended local exchange networks between neighbors and transformed the republic into an integrated market of overlapping trade triangles.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationThe Edinburgh Companion to Nineteenth-Century American Letters and Letter-Writing
EditorsCeleste-Marie Bernier, Judie Newman, Matthew Pethers
Place of PublicationEdinburgh
PublisherEdinburgh University Press
Chapter2
Pages46-61
Number of pages16
ISBN (Electronic)9780748692941, 9780748692934
ISBN (Print)9780748692927, 9781399508865, 0748692924
StatePublished - 2016

Publication series

NameEdinburgh companions to literature

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