SOURCE: "The Artistry of Whittier's Margaret Smith's Journal," in Essex Institute Historical Collections, Vol. CVIII, No. 3, July, 1972, pp. 235-43.

In the following essay, Ringe contends that Whittier's major prose work, Margaret Smith's Journal in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, 1678-79, achieves artistic unity though the author's development of his narrator as a strong central consciousness in the work.

The major prose work of John Greenleaf Whittier, Margaret Smith's Journal in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, 1678-79, has evoked a critical response that has ranged from the lukewarm to the enthusiastic. Although most of the critics praise the accurate picture of colonial New England life that the book presents,¹ opinions about its artistic success have varied between Whitman Bennett's view that it is only "a pleasing little effort" that should not be considered "a truly notable achievement"² to Edward Wagenknecht's opinion that it is "one of the inexplicably neglected...