100 years on the road
Subtitle: the traveling salesman in American culture
By: Timothy B. Spears.
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 1995
Place of publication: New Haven
Language: eng
Number of pages: 300
Subjects: Traveling sales personnel -- United States -- History; Traveling sales personnel in literature; American literature -- History and criticism
Other titles: One hundred years on the road.
Description: Even today, in Death of a Salesman and The Music Man, the traveling salesman is an intriguing, almost mythic figure. In this lively and vividly illustrated account - the first in-depth study of the traveling salesman, or "drummer" - Timothy Spears investigates the salesman's role in American culture during his heyday, between 1830 and 1920.

Drawing on such sources as diaries, advice manuals, autobiographies, and trade journals, Spears shows how traveling salesmen shaped the customs of life on the road, established the foundations of "scientific salesmanship," and helped to develop modern consumer culture.

Spears reconstructs the cultural history of face-to-face sales during this period, describing the nature of traveling life, the development of strategies for selling to the trade rather than door-to-door, and the problematic relationship of the salesman to society - first as the agent of an emergent, intrusive market and later as a target for critics of "vulgar" commercialism.

Throughout, Spears offers original and persuasive readings of works by Arthur Miller, Stephen Crane, Theodore Dreiser, Sherwood Anderson, Sinclair Lewis, and Eudora Welty and illuminates other cultural representations of the traveling salesman.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 267-294) and index.