Reading Becomes A Necessity Of Life: Material And Cultural Life In Rural New England, 1780-1835 by William J. Gilmore (review)

248Reviews Gilmore, William J. Reading Becomes A Necessity Of Life: Material And Cultural Life In Rural New England, 1780-1835. Knoxville: Univ. of Tennessee Press, 1989. 538 pp. Cloth: $49.95 In his acknowledgments William J. Gilmore recounts how his book began a dozen years ago as a paper presented at the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies Seminar of Princeton University. The wonder is that it took only twelve years to move from a paper to a completed book, for herein is presented a microscopic analysis of eleven townships forming the southern part of Windsor County, Vermont during the first fifty years of the American Republic. Clearly, Gilmore has scoured that hilly terrain leaving few stones unturned. What he has found is a community that despite its apparent geographic isolation was being drawn increasingly into a greater commercial world spanning both sides of the Atlantic. The impact of this association with the Atlantic community was considerable , and it has a great deal to tell us about the shaping of the modern world. Central to this evolving entanglement of the Windsor District with the wider world is the printed word and its dissemination. It is Gilmore's premise that reading does become "a necessity of life" and that the "cultural and material strands of life are part of the same tapestry." In some ways Gilmore's work is reminiscent of the community and town studies produced in such abundance by early American historians during the 1960s and 1970s. They, like Gilmore, sought an identifiable unit (the New England town), established a time period, and then immersed themselves into documents, wills, inventories, tax lists, town meeting records, and a host of other primary data. Gilmore uses many of the same sources, but he explores others as well, taking him to such diverse places as Post Office records, invoices from peddlers, and general store records. Gilmore is blessed (cursed) with a mountain of information compared to the small mounds available for those analyzing earlier centuries. Indeed, Gilmore's work is in danger of drowning in information. Nearly a third of the book is devoted to tables, charts, graphs, and appendices. The text too is embedded with statistical data. AU this is to the good, and those patient enough to plow through will find abundant rewards. Nonetheless, Gilmore's thesis and central arguments are in danger of being inundated in this tidal wave of research. Adding to the reader's chore is the fact that many of the chapters read as if they were produced independently of one another and then simply joined to form the book. More editorial care ought to have been directed at pruning and organizing the text. How typical is the Windsor District? What does it tell us about the development of American culture? Where might we place Windsor and America in the wider context of cultural development? To these questions Gilmore answers with some provocative assessments; however, in certain instances, particularly towards the close of the book, one needs to step back a bit and reflect cautiously on some of his more global, à la Marshall McLuhan, assertions. Gilmore knows the literature well and he does provide us with a broader context in which to place these Vermont townships. Using his design other communities ought to be examined to limn the outlines of the interaction between cultural and material growth. From these we might hope to draw a synthesis that can inform us better, not only about the transformations of our own culture (past and present), but it may also give us a glimpse at what is to come. Northeastern UniversityWilliam M. Fowler, Jr. ...