American Poetry: The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
David S. Shields, volume editor
Read an exclusive interview with David S. Shields about American poetry of the 17th and 18th centuries (PDF, 123K)
View a map of salons, coteries, and clubs of 17th- and 18th-century America
This groundbreaking Library of America volume offers a fresh look at early American poetry, charting its evolution over a span of almost two centuries, from the first years of English settlement in the New World to the death of George Washington. Gathering the work of more than 100 poets—including many poems never previously anthologized and some published here for the first time—it is the most comprehensive collection of its kind ever assembled, a celebration of the rich, varied, and often surprising beginnings of American poetry.
The range of voices is unprecedented: broadside and newspaper satires, epitaphs, children's verse, popular songs, ballads, and Christian hymns evoke the vital currency of poetry in daily life; exhortatory elegies for public figures and historical epics declaimed on occasions of state stand alongside intricate meditative lyrics and private epistolary verses. The dramatic unfolding of American history is made immediate and vivid in the words of the participants: William Bradford reflects on the growth of New England's first colonies; Roger Wolcott recounts the incidents of the Pequot War; Thomas Paine hails the victories of the American Revolution; Ann Eliza Bleecker describes her flight from General Burgoyne's invading army; loyalist Jonathan Odell bitterly mocks the new Continental Congress.
The first comprehensive anthology of early American poetry in more than a generation, this volume incorporates recent scholarly discoveries that have altered our understanding of the early American literary landscape. Alongside generous selections from long admired New England poets such as Anne Bradstreet, Edward Taylor, and Michael Wigglesworth are poets from the Middle Colonies and the South, newly emerged from the archives. Along with familiar favorites by Phillis Wheatley, celebrated pioneer of the African-American tradition in poetry, are little-known verses by Benjamin Banneker, known as "the Sable Astronomer," and African-American Minuteman Lemuel Haynes. The anthology includes hymns recently attributed to Mohegan preacher Samson Occom and the earliest known translation of a traditional Native American chant, Henry Timberlake's Cherokee "War-Song."
The unpublished poems of Henry Brooke, Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson, Joseph Green, Hannah Griffitts, Margaret Lowther Page, and Annis Boudinot Stockton, among others, reflect the rediscovered vitality and importance of manuscript exchange as a form of publication in an era when it was sometimes considered indecorous, especially for women, to appear in print.
Unprecedented in its textual authority and unrivaled in its scope, the anthology includes newly researched biographical sketches of each poet and extensive notes.
David S. Shields, volume editor, is McClintock Professor of Southern Letters at the University of South Carolina, editor of Early American Literature, and author of Oracles of Empire: Poetry, Politics, and Commerce in British America, 1690–1750 (1990) and Civil Tongues & Polite Letters in British America (1997).
Related volumes:
American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century, volume 1 (Freneau to Whitman)
American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century, volume 2 (Melville to Stickney)
American Poetry: The Twentieth Century, volume 1 (Henry Adams to Dorothy Parker)
American Poetry: The Twentieth Century, volume 2 (E.E. Cummings to May Swenson)
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American Poetry: The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
952 pages
List price: $40.00
Capt. John Smith
Writings, with Other Narratives of Roanoke, Jamestown, and the First English Settlement of America
James Horn, editor
The Proceedings of the English Colonie in Virginia • A Description of New England • The Generall Historie • four other narratives by Smith • 44 pages of illustrations
Additional narratives by Gabriel Archer, Arthur Barlowe, Lord De La Warre, Ralph Lane, Ralph Hamor, Thomas Hariot, George Percy, John Rolfe, Henry Spelman, William Strachey, John White, and Edward Maria Wingfield
“Capt. John Smith: Writings throbs with the spirit of exultant exploration, resourcefulness, and endurance…. [I]t also wonderfully conveys the fantastic plenitude and opportunity of the New World.”—The Boston Globe
OverviewOne of the truly legendary figures of American history, the soldier, explorer, and colonist Captain John Smith was a vivid and prolific chronicler of the beginnings of English settlement in the New World. This Library of America volume brings together seven of his works, along with 16 additional narratives by other writers, that recount firsthand the tragic, harrowing, and dramatic events of the settlement of Roanoke and Jamestown.
A founder of Jamestown in 1607, Smith exhibited the courage, determination, and leadership that all proved crucial to its survival. A True Relation tells of the colony’s perilous first year, while The Proceedings and The Generall Historie continue the story of its struggle to survive and prosper. A Description of New England and New Englands Trials describes Smith’s exploration of the northern coast and the prospects for its settlement. In The True Travels Smith recalls his adventures as a soldier in Eastern Europe and his amazing escape from Turkish slavery. Advertisements for the Unexperienced Planters, his last book, is a critical examination of the successes and failures of the English colonial enterprise. Written in a consistently lively style, Smith’s works are filled with suspense, astonishment, and keen observations of American Indian cultures and New World landscapes.
The 16 additional narratives include accounts of the “Lost Colony” of Roanoke, the horrific “starving time” at Jamestown, and a shipwreck off Bermuda. Amplifying and sometimes challenging Smith’s version of events, these narratives capture the fear and fascination of early encounters with the Indians; the brutality, desperation, and ingenuity of settlers facing extreme hardship; the complex interplay of feuds and rivalries, both between the English and the Powhatan Indians and within the colony itself; and the enduring story of Pocahontas, who came to occupy a unique place between two cultures. Included in the volume are 44 pages of contemporary drawings, 15 of them full-color illustrations by John White.
James Horn, editor, is O’Neill Director of the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Library at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation and lecturer at the College of William & Mary. His works include Adapting to a New World: English Society in the Seventeenth Century Chesapeake and A Land As God Made It: Jamestown and the Birth of America.
Visit the official Web site of Jamestown’s 400th anniversary
ISBN 978-1-59853-001-81329 pages
List price: $45.00
American Speeches: Political Oratory from the Revolution to the Civil War
Ted Widmer, editor
Public speeches have profoundly shaped American history and culture, transforming not only our politics but also our language and our sense of national identity. This volume (the first of an unprecedented two-volume collection) gathers the unabridged texts of 45 eloquent and dramatic speeches delivered by 32 American public figures between 1761 and 1865, beginning with James Otis’s denunciation of unrestrained searches by British customs officials—hailed by John Adams as the beginning of the American Revolution—and ending with Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address. Rich in literary allusions, vivid imagery, and emotional appeals, political oratory flourished during this period in Congress and at campaign rallies, public meetings, and reform conventions, and reached a wider audience through newspapers and pamphlets.
Included are Patrick Henry’s “liberty or death” speech, George Washington’s appeal to mutinous army officers, and Henry Lee’s eulogy of Washington. Speeches by John Randolph and Henry Clay capture the political passions of the early republic, while three addresses by Daniel Webster—his first Bunker Hill oration, his second reply to Hayne, and his controversial endorsement of the Compromise of 1850—demonstrate the eloquence that made him the most renowned orator of his time.
Speeches by figures who did not hold office are included as well: union leader Ely Moore attacking economic aristocracy; woman’s rights speeches by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Sojourner Truth; Henry Highland Garnet’s incendiary call for slave rebellion; Frederick Douglass’s scathing “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” John C. Calhoun’s defense of slavery, Charles Sumner’s “The Crime Against Kansas,” Alexander Stephens’ “Corner-Stone” speech, and several speeches by Abraham Lincoln reflect the sectional conflicts that culminated in the Civil War. Each volume contains biographical and explanatory notes, and an index.
Ted Widmer, editor, is the Beatrice and Julio Mario Santo Domingo Director and Librarian of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University and the author of Martin Van Buren in The American Presidents Series and of Young America: The Flowering of Democracy in New York City. He was director of speechwriting at the National Security Council and a senior advisor to President Clinton from 1997 to 2001.ISBN 978-1-93108297-6
List price: $35.00
Benjamin Franklin: Silence Dogood, The Busy-Body, and Early Writings
J. A. Leo Lemay, editor
Statesman, scientist, philosopher, printer, and civic leader, Benjamin Franklin was also the most powerful writer of his time. From his first appearance in print, in the guise of the eccentric, opinionated, voluble "Silence Dogood" (1722), to his last published article, a searing satire against slavery (1790), he covered every aspect of "the question of America" with radiant clarity, wit, and penetration.
This collection begins with items written by Franklin during his early years in Boston and London (1722- 1726), including the complete "Silence Dogood" essay series. The volume also includes the famous "Busy-Body" essays (1728-1729); many of the news articles and essays he penned after he purchased the failing Pennsylvania Gazette (which eventually became the most widely read newspaper in the colonies); and various political satires, pamphlets, and personal correspondence written while he lived in Philadelphia from 1726 to 1757. The book concludes with material he published while a diplomat in London from 1757 to 1775 (including letters to the press, satires, and pamphlets).
Controversial in his own time, and the subject of vigorous debate ever since—to Matthew Arnold he exemplified "victorious good sense," while to D. H. Lawrence he was "the first dummy American"—Franklin emerges in this collection as a figure of extraordinary complexity for readers to discover, consider, and appreciate anew.
A companion volume includes Poor Richard's Almanack, Franklin's classic Autobiography, and his later writings.
J. A. Leo Lemay, editor of this volume, is professor of colonial literature at the University of Delaware. The author of numerous works on Franklin, including The Canon of Benjamin Franklin 1722-1776: New Attributions and Reconsiderations, he has edited The Oldest Revolutionary and (with P. M. Zall) The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin: A Genetic Text.
ISBN 1-931082-22-7823 pages
List price: $30.00
Benjamin Franklin:Autobiography, Poor Richard, and Later Writings
J. A. Leo Lemay, editor
Statesman, scientist, philosopher, printer, and civic leader, Benjamin Franklin was also the most powerful writer of his time. From his first appearance in print, in the guise of the eccentric, opinionated, voluble "Silence Dogood" (1722), to his last published article, a searing satire against slavery (1790), he covered every aspect of "the question of America" with radiant clarity, wit, and penetration.
This collection begins with items written by Franklin during his early years in Boston and London (1722- 1726), including the complete "Silence Dogood" essay series. The volume also includes the famous "Busy-Body" essays (1728-1729); many of the news articles and essays he penned after he purchased the failing Pennsylvania Gazette (which eventually became the most widely read newspaper in the colonies); and various political satires, pamphlets, and personal correspondence written while he lived in Philadelphia from 1726 to 1757. The book concludes with material he published while a diplomat in London from 1757 to 1775 (including letters to the press, satires, and pamphlets).
Controversial in his own time, and the subject of vigorous debate ever since—to Matthew Arnold he exemplified "victorious good sense," while to D. H. Lawrence he was "the first dummy American"—Franklin emerges in this collection as a figure of extraordinary complexity for readers to discover, consider, and appreciate anew.
A companion volume includes Poor Richard's Almanack, Franklin's classic Autobiography, and his later writings.
J. A. Leo Lemay, editor of this volume, is professor of colonial literature at the University of Delaware. The author of numerous works on Franklin, including The Canon of Benjamin Franklin 1722-1776: New Attributions and Reconsiderations, he has edited The Oldest Revolutionary and (with P. M. Zall) The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin: A Genetic Text.ISBN 1-931082-22-7
823 pages
List price: $30.00
October 24, 2007