978-0-89587-302-6
0-89587-302-8
$11.95 paperback
5" x 7.5"
128 pages
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This volume collects
contemporary accounts of the first successful colony in what would
become the first thirteen United States.
The earliest text dates from
1605, two years before the first landing; the last describes events up
to 1614, when the marriage of Pocahontas and John Rolfe secured a brief
measure of peace for the beleaguered colony. Most of the accounts were
written by the colonists themselves; others reflect the perceptions and
expectations of investors and observers back in England, while two
reveal the keen and hostile interest taken in the colony by England’s
chief rival, Spain. Several of them were written for widespread
publication; others were either private letters or reports meant only
for certain audiences.
These narratives take the
reader from the London stage to Powhatan’s lodge, from the halls of
royal power to the derelict hovels of the Starving Time. They speak of
unimaginable suffering, cruelty, hope, and perseverance. They show the
modern reader what an adventure the founding of English America was—the
desperate battles and fraught negotiations with Powhatan and his
warriors, the political intrigues in Europe and Virginia, the shipwreck
that inspired William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, the captures
and escapes, the discoveries that thrilled the colonists, and the
discoveries that broke their hearts.
about the editor
Ed Southern, a graduate of Wake Forest University, is a
descendant of John Southern, who arrived in Jamestown in 1619. He lives
in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
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