SOURCE: Dunn, Richard S. Introduction to The Journal of John Winthrop, 1630-1649, edited by Richard S. Dunn and Laetitia Yeandle, pp. viii-xx. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996.

In the essay below, Dunn examines Winthrop as a writer, focusing on his narrative style the author uses in the Journal.

For 350 years Governor John Winthrop's journal has been recognized as the central source for the history of Massachusetts in the 1630s and 1640s. Winthrop was both the chief actor and the chief recorder in New England for two crucial decades. He reported events—especially religious and political events—more fully and more candidly than any other contemporaneous observer, and his account of the founding of the colony has greatly influenced all subsequent interpretations of Puritan Massachusetts. The governor's journal has been edited and published three times previously—in 1790, in 1825-1826, and in 1908—but all of these...