A 17th Century Colonial New England Bibliography

This is a sometimes-annotated bibliography of the books in my personal reference library as I research 17th century colonial New England. There are a lot about the Salem witch-hunt, Puritan thought, and Anglo-Indian contact, but also a few odds and ends that make sense to me to have on hand. Please note: I do not lend books. To anyone. Most of these titles can be borrowed from any good public or university library. If you want to purchase a copy of any of these titles, I have included direct links to Amazon.com for all but a handful of out-of-print or hard-to-find local imprint titles. To print out the whole bibliography, please use the printer-friendly version to save paper.

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Breitwieser, Mitchell Robert. American Puritanism and the Defense of Mourning: Religion, Grief, and Ethnology in Mary White Rowlandson's Captivity Narrative. University of Wisconsin Press: Madison, WI. 1990. Order from Amazon.com
Bremer, Francis J.. Congregational Communion: Clerical Friendship in the Anglo-American Puritan Community, 1610-1692. Northeastern University Press: Boston, MA. 1994. Order from Amazon.com
Bremer, Francis J.. The Puritan Experiment: New England Society from Bradford to Edwards. University Press of New England: Hanover, NH. 1995. Order from Amazon.com
Bremer, Francis J., ed.. Anne Hutchinson: Troubler of the Puritan Zion. Krieger Problem Studies. Krieger: Huntington, NY. 1981. Order from Amazon.com
Breslaw, Elaine G.. Tituba, Reluctant Witch of Salem: Devilish Indians and Puritan Fantasies. NYU: New York. 1996. Order from Amazon.com

Breslaw's most important contribution in this book is her research into the records in Barbadoes, where she claims to have found Tituba's name on a slave list. Tituba, Rev. Parris' slave, has historically been known to have accompanied the minister from Barbadoes, but apparently until Breslaw came along, no one had actually searched the records there. She also makes a fair claim that Tituba was an Indian (not black) slave, from what is now Venezuela. She explains the intensity of the witchcraft hysteria in Salem in 1692 as resulting from the Puritans' racism: Tituba, as an Indian, was in the unique position to be a "devil" and yet she could speak in the common parlance of the Puritans themselves, which made her confession as a witch all that much more potent to the Puritan listeners.
Breslaw, Elaine G.. Witches of the Atlantic World: A Historical Reader and Primary Sourcebook. New York University Press: New York. 2000. Order from Amazon.com
Bridenbaugh, Carl. Cities in the Wilderness: Urban Life in America, 1625-1742. Capricorn Books: New York. 1964. Order from Amazon.com

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This page was last updated Feb. 15, 2009 by Margo Burns, margoburns@gmail.com