Excerpt from The American Gazetteer: Exhibiting, in Alphabetical Order, a Much More Full and Accurate Account, Than Has Been Given, of the States, Provinces, Counties, Cities, Towns, Villages Etc; On the American Continent The Author's profe ional duties, however - the delicate {tare of his health, and the attention he has found it necef fary to pay to the revifion, correction and enlargement of the feveral editions of his Geographical Work, have de layed the completion of the Gazetteer much longer than was at firit contemplated but the delay has enabled him to render the Work much more accurate and perfeet, than it otherwife muft have been, by availing himfelf of a large wafs Of information, contained in the numerous maps, pamphlets, and larger works, which have been brought into public View, in the courfe of a few years pail. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."
The rapid rise in popularity of maps and geography handbooks in the eighteenth century ushered in a new geographic literacy among nonelite Americans. In a pathbreaking and richly illustrated examination of this transformation, Martin Bruckner argues that geographic literacy as it was played out in popular literary genres--written, for example, by William Byrd, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Royall Tyler, Charles Brockden Brown, Meriwether Lewis, and William Clark--significantly influenced the formation of identity in America from the 1680s to the 1820s. Drawing on historical geography, cartography, literary history, and material culture, Bruckner recovers a vibrant culture of geography consisting of property plats and surveying manuals, decorative wall maps and school geographies, the nation's first atlases, and sentimental objects such as needlework samplers. By showing how this geographic revolution affected the production of literature, Bruckner demonstrates that the internalization of geography as a kind of language helped shape the literary construction of the modern American subject. Empirically rich and provocative in its readings, The Geographic Revolution in Early America proposes a new, geographical basis for Anglo-Americans' understanding of their character and its expression in pedagogical and literary terms.
