Securing the Commonwealth examines how eighteenth-century American writers -- including Cotton Mather, Benjamin Franklin, Royall Tyler, Charles Brockden Brown, and Judith Sargent Murray -- understood the highly speculative financial times in which they lived. Spanning a century of cultural and literary life, this study shows how the era's literature commonly depicted an American ethos of risk taking and borrowing as the peculiar product of New World daring and the exigencies of revolution and nation building.

"An incisive new study... Baker conceptualizes her readings in pathbreaking ways." -- American Literature

"A thought-provoking gem of a book... All historians and literary critics with an interest in eighteenth-century economic culture will want to read it." -- William and Mary Quarterly

"Baker's argument is instructive and well founded." -- Journal of American History

"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

"Baker has written an incisive, provocative, sparkling book." -- American Antiquarian Society

"Historically astute study." -- Journal of the Early Republic

"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

"Astute and surprisingly lively volume... Highly recommended." -- Choice

Jennifer J. Baker is an assistant professor of English at New York University.

Securing the Commonwealth examines how eighteenth-century American writers -- including Cotton Mather, Benjamin Franklin, Royall Tyler, Charles Brockden Brown, and Judith Sargent Murray -- understood the highly speculative financial times in which they lived. Spanning a century of cultural and literary life, this study shows how the era's literature commonly depicted an American ethos of risk taking and borrowing as the peculiar product of New World daring and the exigencies of revolution and nation building.

"An incisive new study... Baker conceptualizes her readings in pathbreaking ways." -- American Literature

"A thought-provoking gem of a book... All historians and literary critics with an interest in eighteenth-century economic culture will want to read it." -- William and Mary Quarterly

"Baker's argument is instructive and well founded." -- Journal of American History

"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

"Baker has written an incisive, provocative, sparkling book." -- American Antiquarian Society

"Historically astute study." -- Journal of the Early Republic

"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

"Astute and surprisingly lively volume... Highly recommended." -- Choice

Jennifer J. Baker is an assistant professor of English at New York University.