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



 RELIGION in EARLY AMERICA

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.

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

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

Berkus, Catherine A. Strangers and Pilgrims: Female Preaching in America, 1740-1845. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1998.

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

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

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

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.

Byrne, Peter. Natural Religion and the Nature of Religion: The Legacy of Deism. New York: Routledge, 1989.

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. Jonathan Edwards, Religious Tradition, and American Culture. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1995.

---. 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. 

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. 

Fisch, Audrey. The Cambridge Companion to the African American Slave Narrative. New York: Cambridge UP, 2007.

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

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.

Frost, Jerry William. The Quaker Family in Colonial America: A Portrait of the Society of Friends. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1973.

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

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

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.

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. The Antinomian Controversy, 1636-1638: A Documentary History. Connecticut: Wesleyan UP, 1968. 

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

Hall, Timothy D. Contested Boundaries: Itinerancy and the Reshaping of the Colonial American Religious World. Durham: Duke UP, 1994.

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. 

Hoffman, Ronald, and Peter J. Albert, eds. Religion in a Revolutionary Age. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1994.

Holmes, David L. The Faiths of the Founding Fathers. New York: Oxford UP, 2006.

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.

Lambert, Frank. Inventing the “Great Awakening.” Princeton: Princeton UP, 1999.

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

LaPlante, Eve. American Jezebel: The Uncommon Life of Anne Hutchinson, the Woman Who Defied the Puritans. New York: Harper Collins, 2004

Larson, Rebecca. Daughters of Light: Quaker Women Preaching and Prophesying in the Colonies and Abroad, 1700-1775. New York: Knopf, 1999.

Levenduski, Christine. Peculiar Power: A Quaker Woman Preacher in Eighteenth-Century America. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996.

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

Marietta, Jack D. The Reformation of American Quakerism, 1748-1783. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1984.

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. 

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. 

Scheick, William J. 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. 

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

Stein, Stephen J., ed. The Cambridge Companion to Jonathan Edwards. New York: Cambridge UP, 2006.

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 the Lives 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.

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

Walters, Kerry S. The American Deists: Voices of Reason and Dissent in the Early Republic. Lawrence: UP of Kansas, 1992.

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

Weddle, Meredith Baldwin. Walking in the Way of Peace: Quaker Pacifism in the Seventeenth Century. New York: Oxford UP, 2001.

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. 


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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April 8, 2008