Mary Rowlandson Biography

Dictionary of Literary Biography on Mary Rowlandson

At sunrise on 10 February 1676, a little more than a year after the confederated colonies of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Plymouth, and Connecticut declared war against the Algonquian tribes allied under the leadership of the Wampanoag Metacom, or "King Philip," a band of Indians descended "with great numbers" on the English frontier settlement of Lancaster, Massachusetts. Among the twenty-four English settlers captured during the raid on Lancaster were "God's precious servant and hand-maid," Mary White Rowlandson, wife of the Lancaster minister, and their three children. Were it not for this raid and her captivity, modern readers would be unaware of Mary Rowlandson's existence, for her renown arises only from the account she wrote for her children of her three-month sojourn with the Narragansetts. Although Rowlandson was not the first white settler to be captured by Native Americans, her account originated what scholars usually consider the first Euro-American literary genre, the captivity narrative, which persisted well into the nineteenth century and influenced the form of the novel in America.

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