Mary Rowlandson
Mary Rowlandson (1637-1711) was one of the first famous female writers of prose.
- Mary Rowlandson: BritannicaMary Rowlandson, née Mary White, (born c. 1637, Somerset, England—died January 5, 1710/11, Wethersfield, Connecticut [U.S.]), British American colonial author who wrote one of the first 17th-century captivity narratives, in which she told of her capture by Native Americans, revealing both elements of Native American life and of Puritan-Indian conflicts in early New England...
Research & Reference
- The captivity of Mrs. Rowlandson: LOCMary White Rowlandson, in canoe, being held captive by Indians.
- Mary Rowlandson: Credo ReferenceMary Rowlandson was a colonial author. She lived in the frontier town of Lancaster, in the Massachusetts colony. When a tribe of Native Americans destroyed the town, Rowlandson and her children were taken captive. Rowlandson was held for 11 weeks before being ransomed back to the colonists.
Utopian Promise—American Passages: A Literary Survey
- Utopian Promise—American Passages: A Literary SurveyWhen British colonists landed in the Americas, they created communities that they hoped would serve as a "light onto the nations." But what role would the native inhabitants play in this new model community? This program compares the answers of two important groups, the Puritans and Quakers, and exposes the lasting influence they had upon American identity.
Author's Works & Perspectives
The Sovereignty and Goodness of God
Mary Rowlandson's The Sovereignty and Goodness of God, first published in 1682, is an English Puritan woman's account of her captivity among Native Americans during Metacom's War (1675-76) in southeastern New England. In this volume, 17 related documents support Rowlandson's text, which is reprinted from the earliest surviving edition of the narrative.
Women's Indian Captivity Narratives
Enthralling generations of readers, the narrative of capture by Native Americans is arguably the first American literary form dominated by the experiences of women. The ten selections in this anthology span the early history of this country (1682-1892) and range in literary style from fact-based narrations to largely fictional, spellbinding adventure stories. The women are variously victimized, triumphant, or, in the case of Mary Jemison, permantently transculturated. This collection includes well known pieces such as Mary Rowlandson's "A True History" (1682), Cotton Mather's version of Hannah Dunstan's infamous captivity and escape (after scalping her captors!), and the "Panther Captivity", as well as lesser known texts. As Derounian-Stodola demonstrates in the introduction, the stories also raise questions about the motives of their (often male) narrators and promoters, who in many cases embellish melodrama to heighten anti-British and anti-Indian propaganda, shape the tales for ecclesiastical purposes, or romanticize them to exploit the growing popularity of sentimental fiction in order to boost sales. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
A New Literary History of America
America is a nation making itself up as it goes along--a story of discovery and invention unfolding in speeches and images, letters and poetry, unprecedented feats of scholarship and imagination. In these myriad, multiform, endlessly changing expressions of the American experience, the authors and editors of this volume find a new American history. In more than two hundred original essays, A New Literary History of America brings together the nation's many voices. From the first conception of a New World in the sixteenth century to the latest re-envisioning of that world in cartoons, television, science fiction, and hip hop, the book gives us a new, kaleidoscopic view of what "Made in America" means. Literature, music, film, art, history, science, philosophy, political rhetoric--cultural creations of every kind appear in relation to each other, and to the time and place that give them shape. The meeting of minds is extraordinary as T. J. Clark writes on Jackson Pollock, Paul Muldoon on Carl Sandburg, Camille Paglia on Tennessee Williams, Sarah Vowell on Grant Wood's American Gothic, Walter Mosley on hard-boiled detective fiction, Jonathan Lethem on Thomas Edison, Gerald Early on Tarzan, Bharati Mukherjee on The Scarlet Letter, Gish Jen on Catcher in the Rye, and Ishmael Reed on Huckleberry Finn. From Anne Bradstreet and John Winthrop to Philip Roth and Toni Morrison, from Alexander Graham Bell and Stephen Foster to Alcoholics Anonymous, Life, Chuck Berry, Alfred Hitchcock, and Ronald Reagan, this is America singing, celebrating itself, and becoming something altogether different, plural, singular, new.
The Birth-Mark
A stimulating examination of early American literature
New Christian World
- New Christian WorldPriscilla Wald explains that the Puritans saw the Native Americans as allies and enemies. Hear an excerpt from "A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson." Emory Elliott describes the Puritan use of the jeremiad.