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Reading Material: Personal Libraries And The Cultivation Of Identity In Revolutionary South Carolina, Gabriella Angeloni

Theses and Dissertations

In South Carolina, a colony known for its wealth and transatlantic connections, private libraries offer a unique lens through which to explore the culture of reading and book ownership that was an essential part of daily provincial and early national life. Largely overlooked by historians, personal libraries functioned as statements of wellrounded, often cosmopolitan identities before, during, and after the Revolutionary War. A careful reading of newspaper advertisements, probate inventories, loyalist claims, and correspondence, in conjunction with extant books, bookcases, portraiture, and spaces allows us to reconstruct the culture of reading and book-ownership that dominated Lowcountry society before 1800. Doing …