Early American Literature: A Bibliography of Secondary Material

For Recent Publications in the field of Early American studies, please consult:

The Society of Early Americanists Page of Recent and Forthcoming Publications and Journals



 NEW ENGLAND & PURITANISM

Anderson, Douglas. William Bradford’s Books: Of Plimmoth Plantation and the Printed Word. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2003.

Arch, Stephen Carl.  Authorizing the Past: The Rhetoric of History in Seventeenth-Century New England. Dekalb: Northern Illinois UP, 1994. 

Armstrong, Nancy, and Leonard Tennenhouse. The Imaginary Puritan: Literature, Intellectual Labor, and the Origins of Personal Life. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.

Bailyn, Bernard. Glimpses of the Harvard Past. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1986.

Banks, Charles Edward. The Winthrop Fleet of 1630: An Account Of The Vessels, The Voyage,

The Passengers and Their English Homes From Original Authorities. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1930; reprinted Genealogical Publishing Co.: Baltimore, 1968.

Bercovitch, Sacvan. The American Jeremiad. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1978.

---. The Puritan Origins of the American Self. New Haven: Yale UP, 1975. 

Bozeman, Theodore Dwight. To Live Ancient Lives: The Primitivist Dimension in Puritanism. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1988. 

Breen, T. H. Puritans and Adventurers: Change and Persistence in Early America. New York: Oxford UP, 1980.

Breitwieser, Mitchell Robert. American Puritanism and the Defense of Mourning: Religion, Grief, and Ethnology in Mary White Rowlandson’s Captivity Narrative. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991.

Bremer, Francis J., and L. A. Botelho, eds. The World of John Winthrop: Essays on England and New England, 1588-1649. Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 2005.

Brereton, Virginia Lieson. From Sin to Salvation: Stories of Women’s Conversions, 1800 to the Present. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1991.

Brückner, Martin. The Geographic Revolution in Early America: Maps, Literacy, and National

Identity. U of North Carolina P, Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia, 2006.

Butler, Jon. Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1990. 

Butts, Francis. “The Myth of Perry Miller.” American Historical Review 87.3 (1982): 665-94.

Caldwell, Patricia. The Puritan Conversion Narrative: The Beginnings of American Expression. New York: Cambridge UP, 1983.

Canup, John. Out of the Wilderness: The Emergence of an American Identity in Colonial New England. Middletown: Wesleyan UP, 1990.

Carroll, Peter N. Puritanism and the Wilderness: The Intellectual Significance of the New England Frontier 1629-1700. New York: Columbia UP, 1969. 

Cave, Alfred A. The Pequot War. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1996. 

Cohen, Charles Lloyd. God’s Caress: Psychology of Puritan Religious Experience. New York: Oxford, 1989.

Collinson, Patrick.  The Elizabethan Puritan Movement. Berkeley: U of California P, 1967. 

Conforti, Joseph A. Saints and Strangers: New England in British North America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2006.

Cressy, David. Crossing Over: Migration and Communication between England and New England in the Seventeenth Century. New York: Cambridge UP, 1987.

Delbanco, Andrew. The Puritan Ordeal. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1989.

Delfs, Arne. “Anxieties of Influence: Perry Miller and Sacvan Bercovitch.” New England Quarterly 70.4 (1997): 601-15. 

Demos, John. A Little Commonwealth: Family Life in Plymouth Colony. New York, Oxford UP, 1970.

Elliott, Emory. Power and the Pulpit in Puritan New England. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1975. 

Emerson, Everett. English Puritanism from John Hooper to John Milton. Durham: Duke UP, 1968. 

---. Major Writers of Early American Literature. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1972. 

Ferguson, Robert A., Reading the Early Republic. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2004.

Fiering, Norman. Moral Philosophy at Seventeenth-Century Harvard: A Discipline in Transition. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1981.

Fischer, David Hackett.  Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America. New York: Oxford UP, 1989.

Flaherty, David H. Privacy in Colonial New England. Charlottesville: U of Virginia P, 1972.

Fliegelman, Jay. Prodigals and Pilgrims: The American revolution against patriarchal authority. New York: Cambridge UP, 1982.

Foster, Stephen. The Long Argument: English Puritanism and the Shaping of New England Culture, 1570-1700. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1991.

Gay, Peter. A Loss of Mastery: Puritan Historians in Colonial America. Berkeley: U of California P, 1966.

Gilmore, Michael T. The Middle Way: Puritanism and Ideology in American Romantic Fiction. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1977.

Godbeer, Richard. “ ‘The Cry of Sodom’: Discourse, Intercourse, and Desire in Colonial New England.”  William and Mary Quarterly 52.2 (1995): 259-86. 

---. The Devil’s Dominion: Magic and Religion in Early New England. New York: Cambridge UP, 1992.

---. Sexual Revolution in Early America. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins UP, 2002.

Gordis, Lisa M. Opening Scripture: Bible Reading and Interpretive Authority in Puritan New England. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2003.

Gould, Philip. Covenant and Republic: Historical Romance and the Politics of Puritanism. New York: Cambridge UP, 1996.

Greven, Philip. The Protestant Temperament: Patterns of Child-Rearing, Religious Experience, and the Self in Early America. New York: Knopf, 1977.

Gura, Philip F. A Glimpse of Sion’s Glory: Puritan Radicalism in New England, 1620-1660. Middletown: Wesleyan UP, 1984. 

Hall, David D. Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England. New York: Knopf, 1989.

Haller, William. The Rise of Puritanism . . . . 1570-1643. New York: Columbia UP, 1938. 

Hammond, Jeffrey A.  Sinful Self, Saintly Self: The Puritan Experience of Poetry. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1993. 

Heimert, Alan, and Andrew Delbanco, eds. The Puritans in America: A Narrative Anthology. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1985. 

Jennings, Francis.  The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism, and the Cant of Conquest. New York: Norton, 1975. 

Kaplan, Amy. “ ‘Left Alone with America’: The Absence of Empire in the Study of American  Culture.” Cultures of United States Imperialism. Ed. Amy Kaplan and Donald E. Pease.  Durham: Duke UP, 1993. 3-21. 

Karlsen, Carol F. The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England. New York: Norton, 1987.

Knight, Janice. Orthodoxies in Massachusetts: Rereading American Puritanism. Cambridge:  Harvard UP, 1994.

Lang, Amy Schrager. Prophetic Women: Anne Hutchinson and the Problem of Dissent in the Literature of New England. Berkeley: U California P, 1987.

Langdon, George D., Jr. Pilgrim Colony: A History of New Plymouth, 1620-1691. New Haven: Yale UP, 1966.

Leverenz, David. The Language of Puritan Feeling: An Exploration in Literature, Psychology, and Social History. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1980. 

Middlekauff, Robert. The Mathers: Three generations of Puritan intellectuals, 1596-1728. Berkeley: U of California P, 1999, 1971.

Miller, Perry. Errand into the Wilderness. Cambridge:  Harvard UP, 1956. 

---. The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century. New York: Macmillan, 1939.

---. The New England Mind: From Colony to Province. New York: Macmillan, 1953. 

Miller, Perry, and Thomas H. Johnson, eds. The Puritans: A Sourcebook of Their Writings. New York: American Book Co., 1938. 

Morison, Samuel Eliot. Harvard College in the Seventeenth Century. 2 vols. Cambridge: Harvard U P, 1936.

Norton, Mary Beth. In the Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692. New York, Knopf, 2002.

Philbrick, Nathaniel. Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War. New York: Viking, 2006.

Plumstead, A.W. The Wall and the Garden: Selected Massachusetts Election Sermons, 1670–1775. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1968.

Rosenthal, Bernard.  The Salem Story: Reading the Witch Trials of 1692. New York: Cambridge UP, 1993. 

Salinger, Sharon V. Taverns and Drinking in Early America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2002.

Sole, Carlos A., and Maria Isabel Abreu, eds. Latin American Writers. New York:  Scribner, 1989.

Scheick, William J. Authority and Female Authorship in Colonial America. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1998.

---. Design in American Puritan Literature. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 1992.

---. Two Mather Biographies: Life and Death and Parentator. Bethlehem, Pa.: Lehigh University Press, 1989.

Schweitzer, Ivy. The Work of Self-Representation: Lyric Poetry in Colonial New England. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1991. 

Seelye, John. Memory’s Nation: The Place of Plymouth Rock. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1998.

Shea, Daniel B. Spiritual Autobiography in Early America. 1968. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1988.

Sloan, William David, and Julie Hedgeeth Williams. The Early American Press, 1690–1783. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood P, 1994.

Stout, Harry S. The New England Soul: Preaching and Religious Culture in Colonial New England. New York: Oxford UP, 1986. 

Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher. Good Wives: Image and Reality in theLives of Women in Northern New England, 1650-1750. New York: Knopf, 1982. 

Valeri, Mark R. Law and Providence in Joseph Bellamy’s New England: The Origins of the New Divinity in Revolutionary America. New York: Oxford UP, 1994.

Vaughan, Alden. The Puritan Tradition in America, 1620–1730. Hanover, N. H.: UP of New England, 1972.

Wall, Helena. Fierce Communion: family and community in early America. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1990.

Warner, Michael. “New England Sodom.”  American Literature 64.1 (1992): 19-47. 

Westerkamp, Marilyn J. Women and Religion in Early America, 1600-1850: The Puritan and Evangelical Traditions. New York: Routledge, 1999.

White, Peter. Puritan Poets and Poetics: Seventeenth-Century American Poetry in Theory and Practice. University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 1985. 

Zakai, Avihu. Exile and Kingdom: History and Apocalypse in the Puritan Migration to America. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1992.

Ziff, Larzer. Puritanism in America: New Culture in a New World. New York: Viking, 1973. 

Zuckerman, Michael. Peaceable Kingdoms: New England Towns in the Eighteenth Century. New York: Knopf, 1970.


The bibliographies were originally compiled by Prof. Edward J. Gallagher, Lehigh University, and are currently updated and sponsored by Minnesota State University Moorhead.
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March 27, 2008