True Adventures Research Articles

Herman Melville, Immortality, St. Paul, and Resurrection: FromRose-BudtoBilly Budd

Pequod Meets the Chapter 91 of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, second mate Stubb swindles the inexperienced French captain of the Bouton-de-Rose out of blasted but extremely valuable whale carcass. The chapter opens with an epigraph from Sir Thomas Browne's Vulgar Errors: In vain it was to rake for Ambergriese the paunch of this Leviathan, fetor denying inquiry (402). the next chapter, however, Stubb does just by probing the purloined whale's bowels for ambergris, the precious substance of fine perfumes. As Stubb proceeds with his inquiry, Ishmael soliloquizes over the marvelous reversal of olfactory sensations this insufferable fetor: Now the incorruption of this most fragrant ambergris should be found the heart of such decay; is this nothing? Bethink thee of saying of St. Paul Corinthians about corruption and incorruption; how we are but glory (409; 1 Cor. 15:42-43). Gordon Poole argues the name of this foul-smelling French ship was private joke between Nathaniel Hawthorne and Melville about the malodorous diapers of Hawthorne's baby daughter Rose, nicknamed Rosebud at her birth on 20 May 1851, when Melville was deep into the writing of his great sea story. On basis as well as on etymological surmises, Poole claims the encounter with the Rose-Bud gives bawdy, grossly impudent, ironic twist to St. Paul's homily (13). While Poole finds this seemingly minor and dispensable encounter sown dishonor, his scatological interpretation ignores the less urgent but infinitely more momentous end of humankind signaled by raised glory Ishmael's Pauline homily. St. Paul's preachments upon resurrection and immortality 1 Corinthians, evoked Ishmael by the spoils of the Rose-Bud, hounded Melville for lifetime, eventually suggesting late-blooming roses symbolic eschatology. Melville's early commercial success as writer of South Sea experiences whetted his appetite for literary immortality, but after Omoo he wanted to spring free of the restraints imposed by John Murray, his English publisher whose Home and Colonial Library published only works of true adventures. Melville's breakout effort at telling different kind of truth was Mardi, voyage of the mind he hoped would earn him both fame and commercial success. By the time he presented copy to his literary friend Evert Duyckinck, however, he already knew Mardi had failed, for he likened it to tropical may possibly--by some miracle, is--flower like the aloe, hundred years hence---or not at all, which is more likely by far, for some aloes never flower (Correspondence 154). Whether or not literary immortality would ever come, he refused to court transient fame based upon his experiences as a man who lived among the cannibals, as he wrote to Hawthorne (Correspondence 193). Pressed by family responsibilities and the birth of his first child, Melville after Mardi resumed writing of his salt-water experiences because dollars damned him, and quick succession he produced Redburn and Whitejacket before setting off to Europe 1849, ostensibly to get more favorable terms for future publications England. Upon returning to New York on 1 February 1850, he plunged into writing about whaling, material he had skirted his five previous books. Then, after escaping to the Berkshires summer, he discovered Hawthorne--first, as the author of Mosses from an Old Manse, about which he wrote rhapsodic review for Duyckinck's Literary World; and, second, as neighbor living but six miles away. June of 1851, when Moby-Dick was in his flurry Melville wrote Hawthorne he did not think of Fame, year ago, as I do now; [is] the most transparent of all vanities; All Fame is patronage; and he blustered, Let me be infamous; there is no patronage that (Correspondence 192-93). …

Stepping up to power: the political journey of American women

A true adventure story that mixes personal anecdote and fascinating facts to bring womens recent political history to life, concluding with guidance to inspire a new generation of women risk takers.. Harriett Woods argues that it will take more than a woman president to assure women effective power in the next millennium. Stepping Up to Power looks backward in order to move women forward; Woods believes that getting more women to enter the political pipeline will take both their commitment and a knowledge of the past. The author uses her own life story to recall how women excluded from public life were fired by their determination to solve local problems and their passion for social issues. The author tells stories about such colorful figures as Bella Abzug and Betty Friedan; provides step-by-step advice on becoming a candidate; and describes from her own personal experience such moments as the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill hearings, the 1992 Year of the Woman, the appointments of Janet Reno and Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her own breakthrough race for the US Senate in Missouri in 1982. Harriett Woods insists that it will take more than a woman president to assure that women have effective political power in the next millennium. Stepping Up to Power looks backward in order to move women forward; Woods believes that getting more women to enter the political arena will take both their commitment and a knowledge of the past. The author uses her own life story to recall how women excluded from public life were fired by their determination to solve local problems and by their passion for social issues. Decade by decade, from the 1950s to the present, Woods candidly discusses the positive and negative aspects of pivotal events leading to a triumphant moment when women believe they finally have broken through to real political power-only to discover that new challenges remain.The author examines some of the myths about women as voters and candidates; tells stories about such colorful figures as Bella Abzug and Betty Friedan; provides step-by-step advice on becoming a candidate; and describes from her own personal experience such moments as the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill hearings, the 1992 Year of the Woman, the appointments of Janet Reno and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and her own breakthrough race for the U. S. Senate in Missouri in 1982. Stepping Up to Power will fascinate general readers as well as students of womens history. America has been transformed by a revolution that has changed the personal and public relationships between men and women. The question remains: How will women use the power they have gained? Stepping Up to Power provides an inspiring answer.

"Unshelter Me": The Emerging Fictional Adolescent Lesbian

"Unshelter Me":The Emerging Fictional Adolescent Lesbian Vanessa Wayne Lee (bio) Terry Castle opens the fourth chapter of The Apparitional Lesbian: Female Homosexuality and Modern Culture with a discussion of how fictional representations of lesbianism have progressed from inconceivability to undertheorized reality (67). The point of contention for theorists, according to Castle, is determining what "lesbian fiction" is: who or what is represented and by whom? (67). Castle's theory of lesbian counterplotting offers a means for recognizing and evaluating adolescent lesbian fiction. This counterplot is an inversion of what Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick sees as a triangle of male homosocial desire that connects male-female-male: "the bonding 'between' two men through, around, or over the body and soul of a woman" (68). According to Castle, the lesbian counterplot successfully subverts this triangle to depict "a female-male-female triangle, in which one of the male terms from the original triangle now occupies the in between or subjugated position of the mediator" (72, 74). The state of the counterplotting at the end of a novel determines whether it can be categorized as euphoric or dysphoric. If the female subversion maintains dominance through the end of a novel, Castle describes the counterplot as euphoric, but if the traditional male plot takes over, the novel is dysphoric. The lesbian novel of adolescence is part of Castle's dichotomy of probable lesbian plots, the other category being "novels of postmarital experience" (85). She claims that "the lesbian novel of adolescence is almost always dysphoric in tendency" (85). The texts that she specifies are texts written for and read primarily by adults: Dorothy Strachey's Olivia (1949), Jeanette Winterson's Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1985), Antonia White's Frost in May (1933), and Christa Winsloe's The Child Manuela (1933). But while a close look at texts on lesbian themes written both about and for adolescents reveals plenty of dysphoric counterplots—such as Rosa Guy's Ruby (1976), which "depicts female homosexual desire as a finite phenomenon . . . a temporary phase in a larger pattern of heterosexual Bildung" (Castle 85)—it also reveals several euphoric counterplots that defy Castle's classification of the lesbian novel of adolescence.1 My analysis makes use of Castle's theories but requires a change in focus from viewing the "lesbian novel of adolescence" to viewing the adolescent novel of lesbianism. Of critical importance is how adolescent lesbian sexuality is articulated by adults for adolescents in popular literature and culture, because whether the adolescent reads for truth, experience, identification, or pleasure, she reads what the dominant culture deems publishable.2 I propose here a critical account of how authors have textually constructed specifically adolescent lesbian sexual identities. Although Castle sees two types of counterplots in adult lesbian fiction, when the focus is shifted to adolescent lesbian fiction I find three provisional groups, in which both dysphoric and euphoric plots surface. First are texts that position lesbianism as a threat or problem. As such, they do not attend to the formation of a lesbian identity but are designed to educate audiences unfamiliar or uncomfortable with lesbianism and/or to eroticize the lesbian as a facet of male heterosexual pleasure. Texts of this sort include Deborah Hautzig's teen novel Hey, Dollface (1978), Elizabeth Levy's pre-teen novel Come Out Smiling (1981), and Juan Jose Campanula's made-for-cable family special More Than Friends: The Coming Out of Heidi Lieter (1995). The second type of text focuses on the formation of lesbian identities.3 The lesbian identities represented in each text vary in depth, endurance, and scope. The texts best representing this category are Sandra Scoppettone's Happy Endings Are All Alike (1978), Nancy Garden's Annie On My Mind (1982) and Good Moon Rising (1996), and Maria Maggenti's film The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love (1995). Texts in the third category interrogate received wisdom about lesbianism and lesbian identity. Whereas texts in the first and second categories isolate and magnify the issue of lesbianism in their plots, the texts in the final category represent lesbianism with less clarity. Stacey Donovan's book Dive (1996) portrays adolescence as complicated and does not presume that...

Drugs, Crime, and Other Deviant Adaptations: Longitudinal Studies; Coming of Age: The True Adventures of Two American Teens

Drugs, Crime, and Other Deviant Adaptations: Longitudinal Studies; Coming of Age: The True Adventures of Two American Teens

Reviews

Uncivil society: ‘race’ and murder in Nazi Germany Tim Mason, Social Policy in the Third Reich: The Working Class and the ‘National Community’, ed. Jane Caplan, introd. Ursula Vogel, trans. John Broadwin. Oxford and Providence, Rl: Berg, 1993. xxviii+434pp. Notes. Append. Bibl. Ind. £50.00. David F. Crew (ed.), Nazism and German Society, 1933–1945. London and New York: Routledge, 1994 (Rewriting Histories series). xi+316pp. Notes. £11.99. It's the real thing Steven T. Katz, The Holocaust in Historical Context. Volume 1: The Holocaust and Mass Death in the Modern Age. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. xviii+702pp. Bibl. Ind. Notes. £40.00. True adventures of court Jews Eli M. Rosenbaum with William Hoffer, Betrayal. The Untold Story of the Kurt Waldheim Investigation and Cover‐Up. New York: St Martin's Press, 1993. xx+522pp. Ind. $25.95. Benjamin Ginsberg, The Fatal Embrace. Jews and the State. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. x+266pp. Ind. $22.00. Columbus and the legacy of 1492 Zia Sardar, Ashis Nandy and Merryl Wyn Davies, Barbaric Others. A Manifesto on Western Racism, London: Pluto Press, 1993. 95pp. Bibl. £7.95. Dutch ambivalence Allison Blakely, Blacks in the Dutch World. The Evolution of Racial Imagery in a Modern Society, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1993. xx+327pp. Notes. Ind. Maps. Illus. £32.50. Agile Italian evasions Daniel Carpi, Between Mussolini and Hitler: The Jews and the Italian Authorities in France and Tunisia. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England for Brandeis University Press, 1994 (Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry Series, 17). x+341 pp. Notes. Bibl. Ind. £35.00/$59.95. What colour are Jews? Milton Shain, The Roots of Antisemitism in South Africa. Charlottes‐ville, VA and London: University Press of Virginia, 1994. xii+203pp. Notes. Bibl. Ind. $45.00. Surveying European racism John Wrench and John Solomos (eds.), Racism and Migration in Western Europe, Oxford and Providence, RI: Berg, 1993. x+293pp. Bibl. Ind. £34.95.

Rythm Oil: A Journey Through the Music of the American South

Focusing on Memphis, the book describes a series of encounters with many of the legendary figures of American blues and soul music including B.B.King, Otis Redding, Booker-T and the MGs, Elvis Presley, Al Green and Keith Richards. By the author of The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones.

The Dramatic Landscape of Steinbeck's Short Stories , and: The Short Novels of John Steinbeck , and: New Essays on "The Grapes of Wrath" , and: Inside Cannery Row: Sketches from the Steinbeck Era (review)

Reviewed by: The Dramatic Landscape of Steinbeck's Short Stories, and: The Short Novels of John Steinbeck, and: New Essays on "The Grapes of Wrath", and: Inside Cannery Row: Sketches from the Steinbeck Era Joseph R. Millichap John H. Timmerman . The Dramatic Landscape of Steinbeck's Short Stories. Norman: U of Oklahoma P, 1990. 350 pp. $27.95. Jackson J. Benson , ed. The Short Novels of John Steinbeck. Durham: Duke UP, 1990. 359 pp. $39.50 cloth; pb. $18.95. David Wyatt , ed. New Essays on "The Grapes of Wrath."Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990. 139 pp. $19.95 cloth; pb. $8.95. Bruce Ariss . Inside Cannery Row: Sketches from the Steinbeck Era. San Francisco: Lexikos, 1988. 124 pp. $19.95. Curiously enough, in view of the critical tides of our times, the literary reputation of John Steinbeck seems to be undergoing a positive reassessment within academic circles. Of course, Steinbeck's popularity has never waned with the general reader, both here and abroad; most nonacademic students of his work probably would rank him with the "Big Three" of modern American fiction—Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Faulkner. Although the academic stock of this triumverate is marked by mixed losses and gains, after all they are "D.W.M.s" (Dead White Males), [End Page 256] the Steinbeck market looks decidedly bullish. The reasons for this upturn are somewhat difficult to discern, as Steinbeck's work seems as little amenable to the new "political correctness" or the new critical arcana as it was to the old New Republic liberalism or the old New Criticism. Steinbeck's attitude toward the "Other," especially as manifested in nonmale and nonwhite characters, makes the sensitive reader as nervous as any of the masters in the old canon. Perhaps the main reason for Steinbeck's re-establishment is simply an instance of the Emersonian law of compensation; his fiction was so critically underrated for so long that the pendulum had to swing back toward him once again. Steinbeck at his best really is a fine writer, an American master accessible to both learned and general readers, an interesting place to occupy in the continuing battle of the canons. More immediate reasons for his rising stock probably include the omniverous appetite of academic criticism; if Steinbeck does not lend himself to deconstruction, he does yield to biographical, psychological, social, and textual study. Jackson Benson's monumental biography, The True Adventures of John Steinbeck, Writer, marked a turning point in Steinbeck studies in 1984. In short order the fiftieth anniversaries of Steinbeck's major fictions of the 1930s have produced a surge of interest, capped by at least a dozen books of all sorts in recognition of his single masterpiece, The Grapes of Wrath (1939). Interestingly enough, the four books reviewed here concern themselves with Steinbeck's most important and accessible work—the stories, short novels, and popular successes—for the most part from biographical, social, and textual perspectives. It is a pleasure to report that all four are themselves accessible, readable, and valuable in terms of critical insight. Steinbeck's short stories are the subject of two recent books. R. S. Hughes' very competent introduction, John Steinbeck: A Study of the Short Fiction, appeared in 1989 as part of Twayne's interesting new series under the general editorship of Gordon Weaver. John H. Timmerman's new study plows the same ground but from different angles and to differing ends. The net effect of both books should be to re-emphasize a somewhat neglected aspect of the Steinbeck canon. Although most readers know only a handful of anthology favorites—"Chrysanthemums," "Flight," or "The Red Pony," for example—Steinbeck produced a large, varied, and successful body of short fiction. If the "chapters" of The Pasture of Heaven are treated as separate stories, as both Hughes and Timmerman effectively argue, Steinbeck wrote more than fifty stories. Of course, not all of these are minor masterpieces like the anthology favorites, but a surprising number are very good indeed. Both Hughes and Timmerman argue that the stories are important for more than their inherent quality, as both critics see the short fiction providing points of access to the longer, more complex works. Both then...

Looking for Steinbeck’s Ghost by Jackson J. Benson

190 Western American Literature Looking for Steinbeck’s Ghost. By Jackson J. Benson. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988. 231 pages, $24.95.) Anyone who has read and admired Jackson J. Benson’s mammoth, elevenhundred page biography, T he True Adventures of John Steinbeck, Writer (1984), may wonder: what could be left to say about the California author? To ask this question of Benson’s most recent book, Looking for Steinbeck’s Ghost, is to miss the point. Ghost is not merely a compilation of scraps cut from the original biography, but the fast-paced, riveting story of how the biography itself was written. A “collection of character sketches, nonfiction stories and essays,” this new book roughly follows Benson’s fifteen-year search through appearances, contradictions, and prejudice to discover “just who, at bottom, John Steinbeck was” and what “he left to us as his legacy.” In this intimate, first-person account, Benson shows all the requisite skills of a novelist. Part adventure story, part mystery, part comedy of errors—Ghost is hard to put down. Benson begins his story by explaining how a once unknown scholar who never intended to become a biographer was chosen to chronicle the life of one of America’s most beloved and popular writers. From his first meeting with Steinbeck’s widow, who “authorized” the book, through his extensive inter­ views with those who knew Steinbeck—Burl Ives, Elia Kazan, Burgess Mere­ dith, and Arthur Miller included—Benson takes us with him from west coast to east and back again numerous times, crisscrossing the country in an attempt to discover the essence of John Steinbeck. Roadblocks and potholes are every­ where : once-in-a-lifetime interviews lost forever when cassette tapes mysteri­ ously turn up blank, months of research wasted when photocopies of rare documents fade into illegibility or completely disintegrate, and worse, the whole project jeopardized by threatened suits from Steinbeck’s litigious second wife and his two sons. Benson ultimately faces a difficult choice: hedge the truth in order to protect the vanity of a few individuals whom in the biography he has honestly portrayed, or perhaps lose his opportunity to publish and risk financial disaster. Looking for Steinbeck’s Ghost also grapples with the question of Stein­ beck’s inhospitable reception by the “eastern literary establishment.” Benson explains that one of the California writer’s gravest faults was his western origins, saying some eastern critics “expressed prejudice against all things western,” causing, in part, such periodicals as Tim e to pan everything Stein­ beck wrote. Ghost concludes with a revealing comparison between Steinbeck and another popular American writer, whom the eastern establishment hap­ pened to embrace, Ernest Hemingway. Benson’s new book provides a fascinating postscript to Steinbeck’s life and to the preparation of his authorized biography, but one might also profitably read lo o k in g for Steinbeck’s Ghost as a prelude to the biography. How better to appreciate the not-so-small miracle that Benson could endure the fifteen years of sacrifice and misadventure that led to its creation? R. S. HUGHES University of Hawaii ...

Review: The True Adventures of John Steinbeck, Writer, by Jackson J. Benson and John Steinbeck: The California Years, by Brian St. Pierre

Book Review| October 01 1984 Review The True Adventures of John Steinbeck, WriterJackson J. BensonJohn Steinbeck: The California YearsBrian St. Pierre Graham C. Wilson Graham C. Wilson Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar California History (1984) 63 (4): 327–328. https://doi.org/10.2307/25158254 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Graham C. Wilson; Review. California History 1 October 1984; 63 (4): 327–328. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/25158254 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter All ContentCalifornia History Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1984 CHS Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

The True Adventures of John Steinbeck, Writer by Jackson J. Benson

Reviews The True Adventures of John Steinbeck, Writer. ByJackson J. Benson. (New York: The Viking Press, 1984. 1116 pages, $35.00.) It is paradoxical that while John Steinbeck has won the Nobel and Pulitzer Prizes, is the most widely-read serious American author, and is one of the writers whose books are most in demand bycollectors (at antiquarian book sales, they bring more than Dickens), he has during the past four decades been dismissed by New Yorker and Ivy League critics like Edmund Wilson, Alfred Kazin, and Arthur Mizener as unworthy of the serious attention of intellec­ tuals, as a writer who appeals to less than Grade A minds, as Wilson put it. Some recent anthologies of American literature omit him altogether or intro­ duce him with condescending comments about his being significant chiefly for sociological reasons. Steinbeck was angered more than hurt by such snobbery, growling in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech that “Literature was not prom­ ulgated by a pale and emasculated critical priesthood singing their litanies in empty churches — nor is it a game for the cloistered elect . . . Steinbeck himself certainly qualified as an intellectual, one who did extensive research on marine biology, SirThomas Malory, and formal philoso­ phy, but he preferred working in the field to harvesting the groves ofacademe; his view of the role of the writer was closer to that of Walt Whitman, who wrote, “I was the man, I suffered, I was there.” Thus Steinbeck became actively involved in trying to alleviate the suffering and starvation in Cali­ fornia during the 1930s, and on several occasions he lived with and worked among the dispossessed Okies as “Migrant John.” As a correspondent during World War II, he flew with the Air Force and served in North Africa and the invasion of Italy, being recommended (but ineligible as a civilian) for the Silver Star for hisbravery under fire with Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.’scommandos. His countless journeys to Mexico resulted in Sea of Cortez, The Pearl, and Viva Zapata!. Three times he toured Russia (whose totalitarianism he de­ tested), and a few years before his death in 1968, he went to Vietnam. Insatiably curious, Steinbeck was actively engaged in living and drew his best writing from this involvement, so that Jackson J. Benson isjustified in calling his biography The True Adventures of John Steinbeck, Writer. Despite a condescending review in The N ew York Review by a Rutgers professor who finds Steinbeck intellectually inadequate and his biographer guilty of adulation, Benson, a professor of English at San Diego State Uni­ versity, provides a sensible and balanced view of Steinbeck, written in 232 Western American Literature craftsmanlike prose commendablyfree from academicjargon. Bensonacknowl­ edges Steinbeck’s limitations and failures both as a person and a writer, find­ ing him neither a profound nor particularly complex artist but admiring his vitality, his being attuned to the rhythms of life, his “sense of fun, a probing curiosity, and a capacity for wonder.” At its best, Steinbeck’s fiction has a timeless, folk quality about it. When Steinbeck intellectualized, as in the didacticism of Lee in East of Eden or in some of the interchapters of The Grapes of Wrath, he often sounded both pretentious and naive, but his por­ traits of working people are the best of their kind, and he wrote the most authentic dialogue for them in American literature. One test of a writer’s ongoing vitality is his adaptation into other art forms and into folklore. By this token, Steinbeck, like Mark Twain, has become a part of Americana. More of his books have made outstanding mo­ tion pictures than those of any other American author, and ballets, folk songs, operas, and two Aaron Copland scores have been created from his fiction. Unlike Hemingway, whose public persona has been called his poorest character, Steinbeck was basically shy and shunned the limelight. The Rutgers reviewer faults him for not associating more with major literary figures, but Steinbeck never cared for celebrity as such and had a difficult time adjusting to his own. He was intensely loyal to his friends and wrote them a voluminous correspondence, from which his widow and Robert Wallsten produced A Life in Letters. Not...

The True Adventures of John Steinbeck, Writer

The True Adventures of John Steinbeck, Writer

Ducted fan or the world’s first jet plane? The Coanda claim re-examined

There is no question that the distinguished Rumanian inventor and aircraft designer, Henri Coanda (1886—1972), was a highly gifted and creative man. Many called him a genius. There have been at least five lengthy feature articles in various aeronautical or true adventure magazines extolling his remarkable career and bearing such flamboyant tides as, ‘The Jet-Propelled Genius and His Mighty Blow’ (True, December 1956); ‘The Amazing Dr. Coanda’ (Air Progress, August/September 1965); and ‘The Prowling Mind of Henri Coanda’ (Flying, March ] 967). These articles rightly praise Coanda’s multi-faceted pioneering achievements in pre-fabricated houses, soil regeneration, sea-water desalinisation, solar energy, the discovery of the ‘Coanda Effect’ which is well-known to aerodynamicists, his highly innovative aircraft designs such as a twin-engined machine of 1911 (also proclaimed by some as a world’s first), a vertical take-off aircraft, the 1934 ‘lenticular aerodyne’ (otherwise known as a flying saucer), and so on.

The "Whens" of Mary Rowlandson's Captivity

S OMETIME between 1676 and 1682 a New England houseJ wife named Mary Rowlandson wrote a detailed narrative of her experiences as a prisoner of the hostile Indians during King Philip's War in 1676. First published in 1682, this narrative quickly acquired a popularity which has persisted to this day, as witnessed by the fact that the little book has gone through more than thirty editions, the latest appearing in 1937. The language is fresh, vigorous, earthy; the thumbnail sketches of various Indians clear and convincing; the descriptions of places and events often vivid. As a true adventure story, written by the chief participant when the events were still fresh in her memory, it is a superb example of that great mass of frontier literature known as captivity narratives. The story is a familiar one, at least in its main features. Mary Rowlandson, wife of the minister at Lancaster, Massachusetts, was seized by the Indians during the surprise attack on that town on the tenth of February, 1675/6. For eighty-three days she remained a prisoner and slave of the Indians, being finally ransomed and released on the second of May near Mount Wachusett. During that interval she traveled considerable distances with her captors as they moved from place to place. Sometimes they stopped only for a night's rest before continuing their journey; at other times they settled down for a few days or even weeks. The itinerary, in general form, emerges fairly easily from the narrative which the unfortunate captive has left us. From Lancaster she was taken to the Indian villages at Menameset on the Ware River in what is now the township of Barre. After sojourning here for a time, the Indians began a mass migration to the northward in order to escape a pursuing expeditionary force under the command of Major Thomas Savage. During this flight Mary Rowlandson accompanied the

True Adventures of Doctors

True Adventures of Doctors Rees Jones CopyRight https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.44.10.1370-b Published Online: August 29, 2011

The Last of the Logan: The True Adventures of Robert Coffin, Mariner, in the Years 1854 to 1859, Wherein Are Set Forth His Pursuit of the Whale, His Shipwreck on Rapid Reef, His Life among the Cannibals of Fiji, and His Search for Gold in Australia, As Told by Himself and Now First Published Harold W. Thompson

The Last of the Logan: The True Adventures of Robert Coffin, Mariner, in the Years 1854 to 1859, Wherein Are Set Forth His Pursuit of the Whale, His Shipwreck on Rapid Reef, His Life among the Cannibals of Fiji, and His Search for Gold in Australia, As Told by Himself and Now First Published Harold W. Thompson

The Last of the "Logan": The True Adventures of Robert Coffin, Mariner, in the Years 1854 to 1859

The Last of the "Logan": The True Adventures of Robert Coffin, Mariner, in the Years 1854 to 1859

The Generall Historie of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles, together with the True Travels, Adventures and Observations, and a Sea Grammar

The Generall Historie of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles, together with the True Travels, Adventures and Observations, and a Sea Grammar