Detailed Description
The Mad Hatter of Aberdeen: The Life and Times of Samuel Martin by Edward Ranson (Centre for Scottish Studies, University of Aberdeen, 1996), 227pp.
ISBN: 0906 265 215
Samuel Martin was a successful manufacturer and retailer of hats in Aberdeen in the nineteenth century. He was also a publicist and self-promoter and a local Aberdeen character. This study by Edward Ranson is not a conventional biography , a business history, a social history of Aberdeen, an investigation of public opinion in Victorian Scotland or a history of the development of advertising - rather it is an amalgam of all these things. Drawing on Martin's regular but unconventional advertisements in The Aberdeen Herald, Ranson reveals his advice, opinions and interpretations of local, national and international affairs.
