Explores the intersections of print, writing, and media in early American literary culturesPrint Technologies and the Emergence of American Literary Cultures traces the complex dynamics that shaped literary production in North America from pre-Columbian times through the early nineteenth century. Oliver Scheiding’s in-depth study demonstrates how literary cultures emerged not from isolated acts of authorship, but through a network of human and non-human me...

The essays that comprise Elusive Archives raise a common question: how do we study material culture when the objects of study are transient, evanescent, dispersed or subjective? Such things resist the taxonomic protocols that institutions, such as museums and archives, rely on to channel their acquisitions into meaningful collections. What holds these disparate things together here are the questions authors ask of them. Each essay creates by means of its method a provisional colle...

Worlding America explores the circulation of short narratives in the early Americas through a combination of neglected primary materials and scholarly commentary. Building on recent reconsiderations of American literature in light of transnational and hemispheric approaches, it follows the migration of stories from various backgrounds and demonstrates how forms and themes developed in a new literary market that spanned the Atlantic world.While short narratives prior to 180...

Through innovative interdisciplinary methodologies and fresh avenues of inquiry, the nine essays collected in A Peculiar Mixture endeavor to transform how we understand the bewildering multiplicity and complexity that characterized the experience of German-speaking people in the middle colonies. They explore how the various cultural expressions of German speakers helped them bridge regional, religious, and denominational divides and eventually find a way to partake in America’s em...

In 1776, America was a hotbed of enlightenment and revolution. Thomas Paine not only spurred his fellow Americans to action but soon came to symbolize the spirit of the Revolution. His elegantly persuasive pieces spoke to the hearts and minds of those fighting for freedom. He was later outlawed in Britain, jailed in France, and finally labeled an atheist upon his return to America."No writer has exceeded Paine in ease and familiarity of style; in perspicuity of expression, happines...

BANCROFF PRIZE WINNER • King Philip's War, the excruciating racial war—colonists against Indigenous peoples—that erupted in New England in 1675, was, in proportion to population, the bloodiest in American history. Some even argued that the massacres and outrages on both sides were too horrific to "deserve the name of a war."The war's brutality compelled the colonists to defend themselves against accusations that they had become savages. But Jill Le...

This authoritative Bantam Classic edition presents readers with a wide-ranging selection of Benjamin Franklin’s most important writings, illuminating the complex and appealing character of this quintessential American who rose to fame as a publisher, inventor, educator, bon vivant, and statesman.Here are selections from Franklin’s newspaper articles, from the sage wisdom of Poor Richard’s Almanac, from his entertaining letters, from his scientific essays, from his politica...

Completely revised and edited with an introduction and notes by Vincent CarrettaAn exciting and often terrifying adventure story, as well as an important precursor to such famous nineteenth-century slave narratives as Frederick Douglass's autobiographies, Olaudah Equiano's The Interesting Narrativerecounts his kidnapping in Africa at the age of ten, his service as the slave of an officer in the British Navy, his ten years of labor on slave ships until he w...

In 'Salem Witchcraft (Vol. I&II)', Charles Wentworth Upham provides a comprehensive account of the infamous witch trials that took place in Salem, Massachusetts in the late 17th century. Upham combines historical research with a narrative style that immerses the reader in the chilling events that unfolded during this dark period in American history. The author's detailed analysis of the social, political, and religious factors that contributed to the hysteria surrounding the witch trials o...

Table of Contents:John Smith (Born in 1579, died in 1631.) William Bradford (Born in 1590, died in 1657.) Samuel Sewall (Born in 1652, died in 1730.) Cotton Mather (Born in 1663, died in 1728.) William Byrd (Born in 1674, died in 1744.) Jonathan Edwards (Born in 1703, died in 1758.) Benjamin Franklin (Born in 1706, died in 1790.) George Washington (Born in 1732, died in 1799.) John Adams (Born in 1735, died in 1826.) Thomas Paine (Born in 1737, died in 1809.) Thomas Jefferson (Born in 1743...