The Literary Gift in Early America

Some of the most meaningful moments in early American literature relied on historical patterns of gift exchange, David Faflik argues in this compelling book. Gift exchange kept a surprising variety of literary objects in circulation across the diverse societies, economies, and cultures of the Americas, from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries.

From the gifting of a Narragansett grammar as a foundational event in the project of colonization in New England, to the use of Benjami...