Origins & Early Life

Mary Rowlandson, née White, later Mary Talcott (c. 1637 – January 5, 1711), was a colonial American woman who was captured by Native Americans in 1676 during King Philip's War and held for 11 weeks before being ransomed. In 1682, six years after her ordeal, The Sovereignty and Goodness of God: Being a Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson was published.

Pivotal Works & Achievements

This text is considered a formative American work in the literary genre of captivity narratives. It went through four printings in 1682 and garnered readership both in the New England colonies and in England, leading some to consider it the first American "bestseller". Mary White was born c. 1637 in Somerset, England. Her family left England sometime before 1650, settled at Salem in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and in 1653, moved to Lancaster, on the Massachusetts frontier.

Enduring Legacy & Impact

There she married Reverend Joseph Rowlandson, the son of Thomas Rowlandson of Ipswich, Massachusetts, in 1656. Mary and Joseph Rowlandson had four children between 1658 and 1669, with their first daughter dying young. At sunrise on February 10, 1676, during King Philip's War, Lancaster came under attack by Narragansett...

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