From Sacred to Secular: Visual Images in Early American Publications (review)

In her latest, well-illustrated book, From Sacred to Secular: Visual Images in Early American Publications, Barbara Lacey commendably continues to advocate for the importance of graphics as primary sources for understanding the culture and ideologies of American society. Grounding her arguments in the works of visual-culture scholars W. J. T. Mitchell and David Morgan, Lacey uses interdisciplinary methods of analysis to show how, as the disparate colonies slowly came together as one nation, popular mass-produced imagery of the eighteenth century reflected a lessening of religious authority over American society. Utilizing illustrations from 112 publications listed in Charles Evans’s seminal bibliography of pre-1801 American imprints, Lacey deconstructs the oblique and subliminal meanings of these graphics by exploring how the images work in concert with, opposition to, or subversion of the accompanying text. She examines conspicuous titles such as Pilgrim’s Progress, the New England Primer, and A Narrative of the Captivity of Mary Rowlandson, as well as lesser known works such as the Prodigal Daughter chapbooks.

Lacey begins her self-described textbook with an informative introduction that includes an overview of the history and processes of colonialera graphics and the major publishers involved in their production. In the nine chapters that follow, she expands on this discussion by interweaving her knowledge of printmakers and printed media within her examinations of specific illustrations. Early in the text, she uses memento mori broadsides, frontispiece portraits in published sermons, visionary literature, and primers to focus on the prevalence of religion in visual materials as a consequence of the predominance of New England Protestantism and the religious revivals of the 1740s. Later chapters evaluate the growing interplay of secular and religious imagery by analyzing graphics that incorporate depictions of contemporary society in archetypical religious scenes or vice versa, particularly in Revolution-era military prints and satire and illustrated Bibles published in the latter part of the century. Other sections examine captivity narratives, periodicals, and serials to extrapolate the influence of the French and Indian War and the American Revolution on the contradictory portrayals of Native Americans and women, particularly in allegorical graphics. In the final chapters, Lacey argues that a convergence of sacred and secular imagery at the end of the century is representative of the formation of a civil religion. Exploring the effect of an emerging nation, including issues of race and gender, on the creation of political and national hero portraits and major city views, she deconstructs patriotic allegories published concurrently with the death of George Washington in 1799.

Throughout the book, Lacey provides concise, cogent analyses of individual images that demonstrate her knowledge of religious motifs, modes of visual literacy, and gender and racial iconography. She provides insight on the influences of European art on the context and content of the images and notices small but enticing details that reflect regional influences within the graphics. For instance, an illustration from a 1793 edition of Pilgrim’s Progress published in Philadelphia contains local architecture as a visual detail that could easily be missed by even the most astute observer (72).

Unfortunately, Lacey’s ambitious effort to present an argument using the broadly defined genre of graphic sources, as opposed to a specific artist, publisher, or medium, undermines her thesis. With such a wide range of source material, Lacey understandably needs to condense her argument, but in doing so, she gives the book a convoluted feel by organizing the chapters, and the graphic examples within, in an “approximate chronological order.” She also never fully addresses the southern influence upon the visual culture of the country and tends to gloss over, with little explanation, the omission of genres, as well as facts about the provenance of historically important iconography relevant to her thesis. She accounts for the omission of American Revolution-era political cartoons, for example, through the questionable contention that “satiric prints declined during the war years,” and she does not acknowledge Benjamin Franklin...