Folded Selves throws a new and revealing light on seventeenth-century New England. This is not because it explores unknown texts or obscure events; the examples Burnham chooses to illustrate her arguments are familiar ones. Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation, Morton's New English Canaan, the Antinomian crisis, Williams's A Key into the Language of America and the Salem witchcraft trials have all been extensively examined by critics, but Burnham demonstrates new ways of reading these works by restoring an awareness of the economic tensions which permeate them.

Burnham argues convincingly that it is impossible to understand the spiritual concerns of the period without knowledge of its economic tensions. Using an adaptation of Wallerstein's argument for the development of a world system, she goes beyond narrowly regional analyses of the effect of trade on culture. This larger viewpoint allows her to analyse the changes in economic and specifically mercantile practice on a large scale, and Burnham uses this to argue that changes in transatlantic credit and trade agreements contributed to the development of a new aesthetic in travel and trade writing, as well as what she terms a folded subjectivity: a hidden, interiorized, proto-modern self which came to be associated with merchants.

Burnham then analyses a series of texts and events from the period to demonstrate how these economic tensions helped to shape them. In some cases this method enables her to argue for a radical rereading of a text, for example in restoring the often overlooked financial sections of Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation, or in arguing that the final third of Morton's New English Canaan is overprivileged when it is used as an antitext to Of Plymouth Plantation. In other chapters Burnham highlights the use of finance-related imagery and metaphor. In chapters on the Antinomian crisis and the Salem witchcraft trials she argues persuasively that these are symptomatic of deep-seated tensions within society, and reveal fears about the disjunction between appearance and interiority associated with mercantile sensibility.

Burnham throws new light on well-known texts and events in this interesting and well-conceived book. Her interest in economic tensions allows her to redefine the ways in which these are read and to reveal new ways of understanding them, and restores an awareness of the ways in which the development of new mercantile practices underlie the history and literature of seventeenth-century New England.