Securing the Commonwealth: Debt, Speculation, and Writing in the Making of Early America

The British colonies in America and the early American republic relied heavily on borrowing and paper currency for trade, a matter of both practical and abstract moral concern for many at the time. In Securing the Commonwealth Jennifer Baker considers how this economic circumstance affected writers' perceptions of the process by which a new polity and society were being built, as well as their understanding of their own literary activity, which was also based on the exchange of intangible value in paper form. Monetary speculation came to be seen by many as a model for imaginative writing, both kinds of paper seeking to support the as-yet not fully realized potential of the new nation. Baker divides her book into three sections, on the colonial, revolutionary, and early republican eras, and addresses authors including Equiano, Crevecoeur, Edward Taylor, Cotton Mather, Benjamin Franklin, Ryoall Tyler, Charles Brockden Brown, Judith Sargent Murray; among other influences, she engages with contemporary critics such as Patrick Brantlinger and Marc Shell, as well as with the recent trend of New Economic Criticism.