A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson (Great Classics #31)

About the Author

Mary Rowlandson, née White, later Mary Talcott (c. 1637 - January 5, 1711) was a colonial American woman who was captured by Native Americans during King Philip's War and held for 11 weeks before being ransomed. In 1682, six years after her ordeal, The Sovereignty and Goodness of God: Being a Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson was published. This text is considered a seminal American work in the literary genre of captivity narratives. It went through four printings in 1682 and garnered readership both in the New England colonies and in England, leading it to be considered by some the first American "bestseller." Mary White was born c. 1637 in Somerset, England. The family left England sometime before 1650, settled at Salem in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and moved in 1653 to Lancaster, on the Massachusetts frontier. There, she married Reverend Joseph Rowlandson, the son of Thomas Rowlandson of Ipswich, Massachusetts, in 1656. Four children were born to the couple between 1658 and 1669. At sunrise on February 10, 1675, during King Philip's War, Lancaster came under attack by Narragansett, Wampanoag and Nashaway/Nipmuc Indians. During the attack, which was anticipated by residents including Mary's husband, Joseph, the Native American raiding party killed 13 people, while at least 24 were taken captive, many of them injured. Rowlandson and her three children, Joseph, Mary, and Sarah, were among those taken in the raid. Rowlandson's 6-year-old daughter, Sarah, would eventually succumb from her wounds after a week of captivity. For more than 11 weeks, Rowlandson and her children were forced to accompany the Indians as they travelled through the wilderness to carry out other raids and to elude the English militia.In Rowlandson's captivity narrative, the severe conditions of her captivity are recounted in visceral detail. On May 2, 1676, Rowlandson was ransomed for £20 raised by the women of Boston in a public subscription, and paid by John Hoar of Concord at Redemption Rock in Princeton, Massachusetts.