W TrHAT differences I have with Philip Gura stem from two related assumptions that I believe govern his argument. The first is that v v the value of literary scholarship in the period is to be measured by the degree of its usefulness or conformity to the work of the historian. The second, more deeply buried, is that literary scholars construct interpretations while historians reconstruct truths. Accordingly, Gura accepts the regions of colonial culture identified by Greene and Pole as definitive of the regions of literary culture. In this scheme, New England is but one of five equals, the other four of which cry out to literary scholars for the same amount of attention. But culture and literary culture are not coextensive. It is possible for there to have been a multilayered society that relished conversation, had an eye for architecture, costume, and the opposite sex, and a curiosity about material causes in nature, yet did not generate much interesting literature. Conversely, it is possible for there to have been a less stratified society that cherished literacy, established printing presses, and promoted writing, yet contained few attractive features beyond its high regard for the word. Why literary scholars should treat the two cultures as of equal moment for their work is not clear to me unless they are willing to accept the unsound notion that social history is not interpretive and so is able to provide them with a stable context for their interpretive texts. Such a notion can lead to the suggestion that the literatures of the other regions deserve the amount of attention that has been given the literature of New England and the suspicion that the emphasis placed on New England has been the cause of their neglect. But the slightness of such literatures may be the reason for, not the result of, the detailed attention given New England literature. Richard Beale Davis's work, after all, is now fifteen years old and to continue to imply that the failure of literary students to follow it up is chiefly the result of regional prejudice and academic fashion is to float a balloon from which most of the air of plausibility has escaped. I suspect that many more studies than have met the bibliographer's eye were stimulated by a reading of Davis only to collapse when they came to terms with the available literary material. Take the example Gura asks us to consider, The History of the Tuesday Club. It is, to be sure, a welcome and engaging document of social history, but from a literary standpoint this series of ponderous japes punctuated with vinous breathings and knowing nudges soon grows trying. I agree that