A Week in Wall Street. By One who Knows
New York: Published for the Booksellers, 1841. First edition. Cloth backed boards, with printed spine label, expertly restored. [2], 152 pages. Pencil notes on the rear endpaper may identify a few character names with real-life models. Signature of J.L. Hale, dated 1841. One of the first American books on the stock market. In the aftermath of the Panic of 1837 and subsequent depression, Jackson, "presenting himself as a victim of stock swindling during the Panic of 1837, portray[s] the securities market as a comic stage where the folly of the multitude intersected with the wicked designs of the few.” Clifton Hood, ”In Pursuit of Privilege: A History of New York City's Upper Class and the Making of a Metropolis" (2017). Jackson was also the author of "The Victim of Chancery; or the Debtor's Experience," also published in 1841, a "story of a family reduced to poverty and debtors’ prison continually criticizes the moral and institutional failings that permit…unwarranted suffering,” Maria Carla Sanchez, “Reforming the World: Social Activism and the Problem of Fiction in nineteenth-century America" (2008), an in-depth examination of this work.Wright, American Fiction, 1466; Kress C5511. Item #31918
Price: $4,500.00