Book Review

The first visual image in Tamara Plakins Thornton's fine book features a seventeenth-century copybook designed for those who could read but not write, and the last is the cover of a 1994 handwriting textbook. The forty-eight images between these two show samples of various hands, cartoons, advertisements, and photographs of teachers and students of penmanship as well as a few forgers. This array suggests the rich cultural contexts in which Thornton embeds her chronological examination of how handwriting's distinctive cultural functions and meanings have interacted with American concepts of class, gender, and, especially, identity. The rise of industrial capitalism, shifting social configurations, and the growth of scientific expertise all come into her account.

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In addition to fascinating information about the somatic proportions attributed to letters, Edgar Allan Poe's series of graphological articles analyzing celebrity autographs, and the correspondence between the recent interest in calligraphy and the sale of expensive fountain pens, Thornton offers a detailed account of how handwriting has been taught since the colonial period and how it has contributed to visions of the self-created American. Thornton, in other words, shows how handwriting has occupied its own cultural domain, serving distinct purposes and sending explicit messages across more than three centuries.

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