Every work of fiction tells us something about the audience and the
times it was written for. Today, however, we may have trouble picturing the
readers of early frontier fiction. For many of us, they were the parents of
our grandparents—or even their parents—adults before the end of the 19th
century, dependent on a horse-drawn technology and an agrarian economy.
From the movies and TV, we know what the Old West itself is supposed to
have looked like, but it’s harder to imagine that period of time around 1900 when frontier fiction emerged as a genre—though they were clamorous years, as the Gilded Age dissolved into the
Progressive Era (imagine the white-haired Mark Twain morphing into Rough Rider Teddy
Roosevelt).
Time and tide in America can often be told by its history of
consumerism, and that is tellingly recorded in the advertisements captured and
preserved in print. BITS looks today at the full-page ads to be found in the
pages of McClure’s Magazine during
the year 1907. In the imagery and persuasive wording, we see much of the
popular culture into which the creative energies of writers like Owen Wister
and Zane Grey were projected and found their audience. It’s a different world, while
at the same time fundamentally similar to our own.
Shamelsss
plug: For an in-depth survey of early writers of frontier fiction, read How the West Was Written. Two volumes are
now available. Find out more here: Vol. 1 (1880-1906), Vol. 2 (1907-1915).
Image credits:
Google Books
Coming up: Elmer Kelton, Texas Showdown
I love old ads. Thanks for posting these.
ReplyDeleteMore next week.
DeleteI think, absolutely, that we can learn a lot about a time period from its advertisements. Interesting how so many of these tout a "scientific" kind of approach. Those late 1800s and early 1900s were going to be the age of rationalism.
ReplyDeleteThey show a fascination with technology that's still alive and well today.
DeleteCorrespondence school?? HA!
ReplyDeleteICS was still advertising in the 40's and 50's, but haven't seen any lately. We had an ice box fridge in the late 40's, held one block of ice in a compartment at the top kept food fresh for a day or two. The block of ice lasted about a week. .
ReplyDeleteLove the Arts & Crafts Mission furniture - the book cases and especially the piano stool. It's the style we've decorated with. Thanks, Ron. Noticed the bowler was weighing street shoes - or was that an early bowling shoe?
ReplyDeleteWe have a couple Mission pieces, too, and like them. We'd need a bowling historian to answer that last question.
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