Books Published

Early American Writings

Published by the Oxford University Press (USA), Early American Writings brings together a wide range of writings from the era of colonization of the Americas through the period of confederation in North America and the formation of the new United States of America. The anthology includes materials representing cultures indigenous to the Americas as well as writings by British, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, French, Swedish, German, African, and African American peoples in America during the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries. With more than 170 writers included, the collection represents the works known and admired in the writers' own day, illustrates the diversity of interests and peoples depicted in those writings, and demonstrates the range of cross-cultural references early American readers experienced. The breadth of the collection provides readers with a fuller understanding of the backdrop for what is known as "American" culture today, in all its diversity. Carla Mulford, General Editor; Amy E. Winans and Angela Vietto, Associate Editors.

Finding Colonial Americas: Essays Honoring J.A. Leo Lemay

This collection of essays, edited with David Shields and published by the University of Delaware Press, is premised upon the editors' belief that the stories now being told about the colonial American past represent an "America" newly found, as scholars continue to evaluate and revise the longer-standing stories that have, across the centuries, held particular cultural and critical sway. The collection is a celebration of the widening of scholarly inquiry in early American studies, and it is a tribute to a leading early Americanist whose scholarly career continues to assist the opening up of crucial questions of the early American canon.

Teaching the Literatures of Early America

Published in the Modern Language Association's Options for Teaching Series, the volume is a first-time collection of essays in teaching early American literature. The collection represents a range of materials, from Native American oral expression to writings by Spanish, French, and British colonists to early national writings from British Americans' era of confederation and the early American republic. Essayists include, in order of appearance in the collection, James Ruppert, Amy E. Winans, Sharon M. Harris, Pattie Cowell, Carla Mulford, E. Thomson Shields, Jr., and Dana D. Nelson, Rosalie Murphy Baum, David S. Shields, Philip F. Gura, Frank Shuffelton, Nicholas D. Rombes, William J. Scheick, Joseph Fichtelberg, Jeffrey H. Richards, Gregory Eiselein, Kathryn Zabelle Derounian-Stodola, Russell Reising, Karen E. Rowe, Jose F. Aranda, Jr., Dennis D. Moore, and Gary L. Hewitt. A useful bibliographical essay by Edward J. Gallagher concludes the indexed volume.

American Women Prose Writers to 1820

Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 200

Published in a series of three volumes devoted to American women writers of prose, American Women Prose Writers to 1820 includes sixty scholarly biographies of early American women writers, prepared by scholars from a variety institutions in the U.S. and Europe. Taken altogether, the contributors to the volume have created an exceptional compendium of information related to early women's literary culture. Edited with the assistance of Angela Vietto and Amy E. Winans, the volume won the Dictionary of Literary Biography series Editorial Award for 1998, the year it was published.

Only for the Eye of a Friend: The Poems of Annis Boudinot Stockton

A study and edition of Stockton's poems, the book shows the extent to which critical assumptions about early American writers have historically been driven by two main contentions, that only those writings published in their own day are "worth" studying now and that women were precluded from entering print. As I indicate in this book, the study of Stockton's poems and their wide circulation calls such facile assumptions about the culture of print into serious question. The study identifies the numerous poems by Annis Stockton (probably the most prolific and most published woman poet of her day, with the exception of Phillis Wheatley) that appeared in print, and it reveals the extent to which literary networks served elite group writers more effectively, often, than print, in establishing credibility and expertise in one�s chosen genre. Stockton was a favorite of George Washington. (The book was published by the University Press of Virginia, the publisher of the Papers of George Washington series.) As I worked on the book and on articles associated with it, I received the Cincinnati History Prize from the Society of the Cincinnati in the State of New Jersey, for "distinguished achievement in advancing the knowledge, understanding, and appreciation of American history."

William Hill Brown's The Power of Sympathy (1789) and Hannah Webster Foster's The Coquette (1797)

Published in the Penguin Classics series of Penguin-Putnam, this critical, scholarly edition provides the most reliable texts of these two earliest best-selling American novels, along with a sophisticated critical apparatus that places the novels in their cultural context. The book also includes appendixes of additional materials related to the era's gendering of culture.

John Leacock's The First Book of the American Chronicles of the Times, 1774-1775

The volume is a critical edition of a six-chapter pamphlet series written by a metalworker from Philadelphia. In a sometimes hilariously funny imitation of biblical texts, the pamphlets spoofed Whig millennial rhetoric of the Boston leaders even as it staunchly supported the American Revolution against Great Britain. In his biblical parodic satire, Leacock (a friend of leading Boston radicals and a relative of Benjamin Franklin) shows keen insight into current cultural and political matters, and, affiliating the battle prowess of the rebellious colonists with noted Native American war leaders, he mocks what are construed as the silly activities "and the fear" of the British soldiers in Boston, especially General Thomas Gage. It was published by the University of Delaware Press, of the Associated University Presses.

The Heath Anthology of American Literature

Paul Lauter, et al., eds.

As the sole early Americanist on the editorial board at the time it appeared, I edited the materials from the era of contact by Europeans with Native Americans through the late eighteenth century. Originally published with D. C. Heath, the anthology is now being published by Houghton Mifflin. I remained on the editorial board from its first edition (the first volume of which is pictured here) through the third edition, that is, 1990-1997. In addition to writing several essays during the 1990s on canon formation, I published two essays with the Heath Anthology of American Literature Newsletter.