Until recent facsimile printings without notes, "New English Canaan" (originally published in 1637) has been reprinted only twice, one in Peter Force's "Tracts" (1836) and in 1883 by the Massachusetts Historical Society. This book represents the first edition created from and textually-collated with all known original copies in the world; it also constitutes the first full-length biography of Thomas Morton of "Merrymount" (1576-1647?).
Jack Dempsey grew up in Stoneham, Massachusetts. With his B.A. summa cum laude in English from University of Mass. at Amherst, he began a freelance career in New York in 1979, and from there took his fiction-writing to Crete and Greece, where he published Ariadne's Brother: A Novel on the Fall of Bronze Age Crete (Athens: Kalendis & Co. 1996; Greek translation by Vicky Chatzopolou 1999), and he has lectured and published on related subjects in both countries.
Dempsey took his Ph.D. in Early and Native American Studies from Brown University (1998) and has taught at Wheaton College, Mass. He has also produced two videodocumentaries on Native and Colonial American subjects: Thomas Morton & the Maypole of Merrymount (2 hrs./1992) and Nani: A Native New England Story (1 hr./1999).
email: jd37@ici.net