The Commerce of Vision: Optical Culture and Perception in Antebellum America

by Peter Brownlee

When Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in 1837 that Our Age is Ocular, he offered a succinct assessment of antebellum America's cultural, commercial, and physiological preoccupation with sight. In the early nineteenth century, the American city's visual culture was manifest in pamphlets, newspapers, painting exhibitions, and spectacular entertainments; businesses promoted their wares to consumers on the move with broadsides, posters, and signboards; and...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0812250427
• ISBN13: 9780812250428
• Release Date: October 2018
• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Length: 264 Pages
• Weight: 1.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 7.1" x 10.1"