An illustrated history of the umbrella's place in life and literature Humans have been making, using, perfecting, and decorating umbrellas for millennia—holding them over the heads of rulers, signaling class distinctions, and exploring their full imaginative potential in folk tales and novels. As Rankine points out, Derrida sought to find the meaning (or lack thereof) behind an umbrella mentioned in Nietzsche's notes, Robert Louis Stevenson wrote essays on the handy object, and Dickens used umbrellas as a narrative device for just about everything. She tackles the gender, class, and social connotations of carrying an umbrella and helps us realize our deep connection to this most forgettable everyday object—which we only think of when we don't have one.