• In the 18th-century, dozens of writers took to a new form of fiction that focused on ordinary things – coins, banknotes, shoes, carriages, dolls. 
• These stories brought things to life, granting them their own voices. 
• Today literary scholars call them “object-narratives” or “it-narratives”, so named after their inanimate protagonists. 

People have been telling stories about why things matter to them for centuries. 

These objects may be created from cotton, wood, or clay, but our feelings about them turn them into valuable assets. We cost them well above their price in the marketplace.