Extant letters addressed to England by Massachusetts Bay colonists during the colony's first decade are provided with linking narrative and explanatory notes.

They are grouped by six major themes: the military experience, the meaning of the war, views of the South, politics on the home front, the personal sacrifices of war, and the correspondence of one New England family.

From John Winthrop and Anne Bradstreet to Emerson, Hawthorne, Dickinson, and Thoreau to Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton, and John Updike, this anthology provides a collective self-portrait of the New England mind from the Puritans to the present. 9 halftones.

One of America's earliest books and one of the most important early Pilgrim tracts to come from American colonies. This book helped persuade others to come join those who already came to Plymouth.