Colonial America: A History in Documents (Pages from History)

Colonial America is an extraordinary collection of original documents that show what life in the American colonies was really like for colonists, Native Americans, and slaves. From Georgia to Maine, diaries, letters, newspaper clippings, posters, and a multitude of primary sources provide lively insight. Some examples include:
*Prenuptial agreements for women, child-rearing manuals, a letter from a father to his daughter explaining why inequality was beneficial for both men and women
*Native American land deeds, the creation story, captivity narratives
*Laws regulating slaves, advertisements for runaways, a letter justifying a wife's harsh treatment of a house servant
*A poem from a boy sent to the colonies for bad behavior, an exposé of German immigrant indenture
From wooden spoons to imported china, from adversarial relations between Indians and whites to colonial advocacy of native land protection, and from "limb of England" to a new sense of identity, Colonial America is a fascinating, oftentimes intimate, look at life in the colonies.

Edward G. Gray is Assistant Professor of History at Florida State University. His previous works include New World Babel: Languages & Nations in Early America (Princeton, 1999) and The Language Encounter in the Americas, 1492-1800: A Collection of Essays(Berghahn, 2000).