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



THE STAPLE COLONIES

Applebaum, Robert, and John Wood Sweet, eds. Envisioning an English Empire: Jamestown and the Making of the North Atlantic World. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2005.

Breen, T. H. Tobacco Culture:  The Mentality of the Great Tidewater Planters on the Eve of Revolution. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1985. 

Bridenbaugh, Carl. Jamestown, 1544-1699. New York: Oxford UP, 1980.

Burstein, Andrew. The Inner Jefferson: Portrait of a Grieving Optimist. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1995.

Campbell, Mavis C.  The Maroons of Jamaica, 1655-1796: A History of Resistance, Collaboration & Betrayal. Granby: Bergin & Garvey, 1988. 

Chaplin, Joyce E. An Anxious Pursuit: Agricultural Innovation & Modernity in the Lower South, 1730-1815. Chapel Hill: U North Carolina P, 1993.

Costanzo, Angelo. “African-Caribbean Narrative of British America.” Resources for American Literary Study 19.2 (1993): 260-74. 

Craton, Michael. Testing the Chains: Resistance to Slavery in the British West Indies. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1982.

Craven, Wesley Frank. The Virginia Company of London, 1606-1624. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1957. 1970.

Cox, John D. Traveling South: Travel Narratives and the Construction of American Identity. Athens: U of Georgia P, 2005.

Davis, Richard Beale. A Colonial Southern Bookshelf: Reading in the Eighteenth Century. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1979.

---. Intellectual Life in the Colonial South, 1587-1763. Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 1978. 

---. Intellectual Life in Jefferson’s Virginia, 1790-1830. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1964.

---. Literature and Society in Early Virginia, 1608-1840. Baton Rouge: U of Louisiana P, 1973. 

Dunn, Richard S. Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1972. 

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

Gallay, Alan, ed. Voices of the Old South: Eyewitness Accounts, 1528-1861. Athens: U of  Georgia P, 1994. 

Greene, Jack P. Pursuits of Happiness: The Social Development of Early Modern British Colonies and the Formation of American Culture. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1988.

Hoffman, Paul E. A New Andalucia and a Way to the Orient: The American Southeast During the Sixteenth Century. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1990.

Isaac, Rhys. The Transformation of Virginia, 1740-1790. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1982. 

Kulikoff, Allan. Tobacco and Slaves: The Development of Southern Cultures in the Chesapeake, 1680-1800. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1986.

Kupperman, Karen Ordahl. Roanoke, the Abandoned Colony. Totowa, N.J.: Rowman & Allanheld, 1984.

Lefler, Hugh T. “Promotional Literature of the Southern Colonies.” Journal of Southern History 33 (1967): 3-25. 

Lemay, J. A. Leo. Essays in Early Virginia Literature Honoring Richard Beale Davis. New York: Burt Franklin, 1977. 

---. Did Pocahontas Save Captain John Smith? Athens, Georgia: The U of Georgia P, 1992.

---. Men of Letters in Colonial Maryland. Knoxville, U of Tennessee P, 1972.

Lewis, Gordon K. Main Currents in Caribbean Thought: The Historical Evolution of Caribbean  Society in Its Ideological Aspects, 1492-1900. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1983. 

Miller, Perry. “Religion and Society in the Early Literature of Virginia.” Errand Into the Wilderness. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1956. 99-140. 

Morgan, Edmund S. American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia. New York: Norton, 1975. 

Nash, Gary B. “The Image of the Indian in the Southern Colonial Mind.” The Wild Man Within. Ed. Edward Dudley and Maximillian E. Novak. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 1972. 55-86.

Price, David. Love and Hate in Jamestown: John Smith, Pocahontas, and the Heart of a New Nation. New York: Knopf, 2003.

Quattlebaum, Paul.  The Land Called Chicora: The Carolinas Under Spanish Rule With French Intrusions, 1520-1670. Gainesville: U of Florida P, 1956.

Quinn, David Beers.  Set Faire for Roanoke: Voyages and Colonies, 1584-1606. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1985.

Rogers, George C., Jr. “The South Before 1800.” Interpreting Southern History: Historiographical Essays in Honor of Sanford W. Higginbotham. Ed. John B. Boles and Evelyn Thomas Nolen. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1987. 6-47. 

Rubin, Louis D., Jr.  The History of Southern Literature. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1985.

Rutman, Anita. “Still Planting the Seeds of Hope: The Recent Literature of the Early Chesapeake Region.”  Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 95.1 (1987): 3-24. 

Schmidt, Susan. Landfall along the Chesapeake: In the Wake of Captain John Smith. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2006.

Shields, David S. “Literature of the Colonial South.” Resources for American Literary Study 19.2 (1993): 174-222. 

Simpson, Lewis P. "The Act of Thought in Virginia.” Early American Literature 14 (1979-80): 253-68.

---. The Dispossessed Garden: Pastoral and History in Southern Literature. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1975.

Tate, Thad W., and David L. Ammerman. The Chesapeake in the Seventeenth Century: Essays on Anglo-American Society. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1979.

Whittenburg, James P. “Primal Forces: Three Interlocking Themes in the Recent Literature on Eighteenth-Century Virginia.” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 104.1 (1996): 113-20. 

Wright, Louis B. The Colonial Search for a Southern Eden. New York: Haskell House, 1973. 

---. “Literature in the Colonial South.” Huntington Library Quarterly 10 (1947): 293-315. 


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