Journeys in New Worlds: Early American Women's Narratives

Wisconsin Studies in Autobiography

by William L. Andrews (Editor), Annette Kolodny (Editor), Daniel B. Shea (Editor)

Four early American women tell their own   Mary Rowlandson on her capture by Indians in 1676, Boston businesswoman Sarah Kemble Knight on her travels in New England, Elizabeth Ashbridge on her personal odyssey from indentured servant to Quaker preacher, and Elizabeth House Trist, correspondent of Thomas Jefferson, on her travels from Philadelphia to Natchez.  Accompanied by introductions and extensive notes.

"The writings of four hearty women who braved considerable privation and suffering in a wild, uncultivated 17th- and 18th-century America.  Although confined by Old World patriarchy, these women, through their narratives, have endowed the frontier experience with a feminine identity that is generally absent from early American literature."— Publishers Weekly

Genres: History

232 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

William Leake Andrews (1948-) is an American Professor Emeritus of English at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a scholar of early African-American literature. Wikipedia

Reviews

[Andy · Rating 2 out of 5]

kinda dry initially, but gets really interesting when you investigate the silences and look into the historical context. quaker women were pretty kick-ass, especially compared to puritans, eww gross.

[Cody · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read a couple of the narratives in this for a class I'm taking on early American women's adventure stories. The texts are pretty accessible, and the introductions to each narrative are really well researched and make the texts even more easy to read.