William Bradford's Books

Douglas Anderson is the Sterling Goodman Professor of English at the University of Georgia. He is the author of A House Undivided: Domesticity and Community in American Literature and The Radical Enlightenments of Benjamin Franklin, the latter available from Johns Hopkins.

• Contents:Preface and AcknowledgementsIntroduction: The Operations of PrintONE Words and WindTWO Such Neighbors and Brethren As We AreTHREE Artificial PersonsFOUR Here Is the Miserablest TimeFIVE Controller of StoriesConclusion: The High Preserver of MenNotesIndex

Meticulously researched and eloquently argued... This lovingly fashioned biography of the first American history book affirms the fundamental responsibilities of good history writing. -- Richard J. Bell New England Quarterly 2004 The extraordinary care with which Anderson has crafted his own book can be seen as a kind of homage to its subject... William Bradford's Books is in many ways an unexpectedly rewarding read and a major contribution to early American studies. It is a text that literary critics and historians are both likely to engage with and to rely on for a long time to come and that is poised to change forever how Of Plimmoth Plantation is read and taught. -- Michelle Burnham William and Mary Quarterly 2004 A model of close reading based on strategies that few if any early Americanists have employed. -- David D. Hall Common-Place 2004 A substantial analysis of the form and content of Bradford's history of Plymouth studied against the era's reading practices, publishing conventions, and scriptural interpretations... By making sense of Bradford's manuscript, Anderson brings Bradford himself closer. -- Mark Noll First Things 2004 The publication of Douglas Anderson's fine book seems, well, providential, and one hopes that it finds the audience that it so richly deserves. -- David Read American Historical Review 2004 Anderson himself has written a book that presents Bradford's work in equally splendid and unexpected ways, restoring complexity and immediacy to a volume that we thought we knew all along... It is a rare accomplishment to bring readers back to a text as canonical as Of Plimmouth Plantation in a new way. -- Kathleen Donegan Early American Literature 2004 Through Anderson's rich and multifaceted portrait... the reader ultimately re-experiences the full meaning of Bradford's attempt to capture the Puritan experience in the New World. -- Oliver Scheiding Amerikastudien / American Studies 2005 Rarely can a scholar so thoroughly resituate such a foundational work as William Bradford's history as Anderson does here. -- Julie Sievers Libraries and Culture 2005