The Power of Objects in Eighteenth-Century British America

“Represents some of the best of material culture scholarship, blending new information and ideas that are stretched to thought-provoking but not always documentable observations.”—Panorama: Journal of the AHAA

“This is an exceptional example of the recent turn in material culture studies toward object assemblages. . . . Van Horn’s work reveals how objects and people were integral to the networks that defined new individual and group identities within an emerging social order.”—Journal of Southern History

“Provides a convincing argument for the centrality of material culture studies to the ever-evolving American historical imagination. . . . Van Horn offers deft integration of material, visual, textual, emotional, and embodied evidence.”—Winterthur Portfolio

“Forms a powerful testament to the value of true interdisciplinarity in its ability to advance histories of portraiture, decorative arts, and print culture as well as civil society, political identity, and gender and sexuality.”—William and Mary Quarterly

“An important contribution to understanding how elite identity was produced during a critical period in American history.”—Journal of American History

“In her insightful analysis of prints of port municipalities, portraits of men and women of status, tombstones, and ornate furniture, Jennifer Van Horn’s study of British America reveals . . . [a] compelling story. . . . [of] a consumer revolution [that] greatly influenced the American Revolution.”—Eighteenth-Century Studies

“Imaginatively developed, extensively documented, and well written. Recommended.”—CHOICE

“The best book I’ve read in years in any field of early American studies; I cannot imagine a more thorough, innovative, and riveting account of the challenge of crafting civility in this period. Van Horn dexterously combines art history and material culture studies, showing a keen sensitivity to the way American civility was tenuously defined both by aesthetic models in the high-style metropole and by more proximate examples of Native and African American material culture. The writing is elegant and lucid and crackles with saucy humor.”—Jennifer L. Roberts, Harvard University

“In the surprising and welcome florescence of new books on eighteenth-century American art and material culture, Van Horn’s stands out as one of the most meticulously researched and engagingly written. Reading text against object and object against text, she draws us into a richly variegated world of human actors, motivations, and divergent worldviews and convincingly extrapolates behavior and belief from an unlikely series of assemblages.”—Margaretta M. Lovell, University of California, Berkeley

“Jennifer Van Horn opens our eyes and minds with her masterful exploration of the centrality of objects to the identity politics of eighteenth-century British America. Bringing portraiture, dressing tables, gravestones, and even a wooden leg into a dynamic and provocative conversation, she vividly instructs us that history is inscribed in material things in ways that transcend the limits of the written word.”—Bernard L. Herman, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill