The Journal and Occasional Writings of Sarah Wister


Book Description

The first publication of the entire journal of Sarah Wister, a young woman who form 1777 to 1780 wrote of her experiences to share with her two closest friends. Her writings, which represent both an autobiographical and a historical document of the Revolutionary War period, are supplemented in this edition by comprehensive annotations and introductory material.




Belonging to the Army


Book Description

Chronicles the identities and importance of civilians to the American Revolutionary War effort Belonging to the Army reveals the identity and importance of the civilians now referred to as camp followers, whom Holly A. Mayer calls the forgotten revolutionaries of the War for American Independence. These merchants, contractors, family members, servants, government officers, and military employees provided necessary supplies, services, and emotional support to the troops of the Continental Army. Mayer describes their activities and demonstrates how they made encampments livable communities and played a fundamental role in the survival and ultimate success of the Continental Army. She also considers how the army wanted to be rid of the followers but were unsuccessful because of the civilians' essential support functions and determination to make camps into communities. Instead the civilians' assimilation gave an expansive meaning to the term "belonging to the army."




Prisoners of Congress


Book Description

In 1777, Congress labeled Quakers who would not take up arms in support of the War of Independence as “the most Dangerous Enemies America knows” and ordered Pennsylvania and Delaware to apprehend them. In response, Keystone State officials sent twenty men—seventeen of whom were Quakers—into exile, banishing them to Virginia, where they were held for a year. Prisoners of Congress reconstructs this moment in American history through the experiences of four families: the Drinkers, the Fishers, the Pembertons, and the Gilpins. Identifying them as the new nation’s first political prisoners, Norman E. Donoghue II relates how the Quakers, once the preeminent power in Pennsylvania and an integral constituency of the colonies and early republic, came to be reviled by patriots who saw refusal to fight the English as borderline sedition. Surprising, vital, and vividly told, this narrative of political and literal warfare waged by the United States against a pacifist religious group during the Revolutionary War era sheds new light on an essential aspect of American history. It will appeal to anyone interested in learning more about the nation’s founding.




Making America / Making American Literature


Book Description

If 1776 heralds America's Birth of the Nation, so, too, it witnesses the rise of a matching, and overlapping, American Literature. For between the 1770s and the 1820s American writing moves on from the ancestral Puritanism of New England and Virginia - though not, as yet, into the American Renaissance so strikingly called for by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Even so, the concourse of voices which arise in this period, that is between (and including) Benjamin Franklin and James Fenimore Cooper, mark both a key transitional literary generation and yet one all too easily passed over in its own imaginative right. This collection of fifteen specially commissioned essays seeks to establish new bearings, a revision of one of the key political and literary eras in American culture. Not only are Franklin and Cooper themselves carefully re-evaluated in the making of America's new literary republic, but figures like Charles Brockden Brown, Washington Irving, Philip Frencau, William Cullen Bryant, the other Alexander Hamilton, and the playwrights Royall Tyler and William Dunlop. Other essays take a more inclusive perspective, whether American epistolary fiction, a first generation of American women-authored fiction, the public discourse of The Federalist Papers, the rise of the American periodical, or the founding African-American generation of Phillis Wheatley. What unites all the essays is the common assumption that the making of America was as much a matter of creating its national literature; as the making of American literature was a matter of shaping a national identity.




Valley Forge Winter


Book Description

Refuting commonly held myths about the American Revolution, this comprehensive history of the colonial army's winter encampment of 1777-1778 reveals the events that occurred both inside and outside the camp boundaries, discussing interactions between the soldiers and local civilians, divisions within the army, the political and military strategies of George Washington, and their implications in terms of the future of the United States. Reprint.




Early American Literature and Culture


Book Description

"Early American Literature and Culture: Essays Honoring Harrison T. Meserole, a timely collection that reflects changing conceptions of the field, contains studies by leading scholars and celebrates the achievements of Harrison T. Meserole--colonialist, bibliographer, and Shakespeare scholar extraordinaire. These dynamic essays deal with areas at the forefront of current research, such as popular culture, minority and non-Anglo writings, recanonization, genre studies, and Anglo-American links. All the contributors were Meserole's students sometime during the twenty-eight years he taught at The Pennsylvania State University, and all have established their own scholarly reputations since then." "Timothy K. Conley examines the institutionalization of American literature. Donald P. Wharton considers the influence of the English Renaissance on Colonial sea literature. Paul J. Lindholdt provides an overview of a vast popular genre, the colonial promotion tract." "Raymond F. Dolle uncovers the satire against Sir Walter Raleigh, the romantic treasure-seeker, by his more hard-nosed contemporary, John Smith. Reiner Smolinski's revisionist essay argues that New England's leading divines did not--as many still believe--justify their Errand eschatologically. Ada Van Gastel discusses the main text of the early Dutch colonists, by Adriaen van der Donck." "Kathryn Zabelle Derounian-Stodola analyzes Sarah Kemble Knight's travel journal as an unusual example of a Puritan picaresque. Jeffrey Walker probes eighteenth-century undergraduate commonplace books revealing the seamy side of Harvard undergraduate life. Stephen R. Yarbrough examines Jonathan Edwards's conceptions of time in the last work he saw to press before he died." "Robert D. Arner introduces and annotates two unpublished poems by the Samuel Pepys of eighteenth-century Virginia, Robert Bolling. Robert D. Habich explores Franklin's rhetorical method as rooted in contemporary empirical science. Cheryl Z. Oreovicz shows how Mercy Warren's tragedies contained stern messages for the post-Revolutionary "Lost generation."" "Jayne K. Kribbs looks at the popular novelist John Davis as a candidate for recanonization, and Paul Sorrentino shows that Mason Lock Weems's so-called children's classic, The Life of Washington, is a complex, artistic work for adults."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved




Milcah Martha Moore's Book


Book Description

Reflecting the multi-faceted culture of Philadelphia culture in the late 18th century, Moore collected the writings of her elite Quaker family, mostly women friends, and poetry and letters by prominent intellectuals on both sides of the political debate over the Revolutionary War. The editors place such personal-use commonplace books in the context of the development of American print literature. Paper edition (unseen), $14.95. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR




Quaker History


Book Description




To Read My Heart


Book Description

Her entries reveal her remarkably considered views on social customs, marriage, gender roles, friendship, and religion.".




To Read My Heart


Book Description

"The Journal of Rachel Van Dyke," a compelling primary document previously unpublished, offers insights into the life and mind of a seventeen-year-old young woman, while also providing a fascinating window into the cultural and social landscape of the early national period. Rachel was a thoughtful, intelligent, observer, and her journal is an important account of upper- and middle-class life in the growing city of New Brunswick, New Jersey. Her entries reveal her remarkably studied views on social customs, marriage, gender roles, friendship, and religion. The journal is dominated by two interrelated themes: Rachel's desire to broaden her knowledge and her friendship with her teacher, Ebenezer Grosvenor. Since Ebenezer was both her teacher and her romantic interest, it is impossible to distinguish between the themes of education and romance that dominate her writings. On several occasions, Rachel and Ebenezer exchanged their private journals with each other. During these exchanges, Ebenezer added comments in the margins of Rachel's journal, producing areas of written "conversation" between them. The marginalia adds to the complexity of the journal and provides evidence of and insight into Rachel's romantic and intellectual relationship with him. The written interactions between Rachel and Ebenezer, together with discussions of friendship and courtship rituals provided throughout the journal, enrich our understanding of social life during the early national period. To Read My Heart will be of interest to students of American history, women's studies, and nineteenth-century literature; all readers will be captivated by the rich expression and emotional experience of the journal. Whether she is relating the story of a young friend's wedding, the death of a small boy, or the capture of a slave in Guinea, Rachel's pages have universal appeal as she seeks to understand her own role as an emerging adult.