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Additional resources for this issue of History Now
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Print Resources:
Here are your choices for book length studies of Mercy Warren:
Davies, Kate. Catharine Macaulay and Mercy Otis Warren: The
Revolutionary Atlantic and the Politics of Gender. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2005. Very interesting study of Warren’s
relationship with the British historian Catharine Macaulay.
Fritz, Jean. Cast for a Revolution Some American Friends
and Enemies, 1728-1814. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1972. Good
sections on the Adams-Otis relationship.
Richards, Jeffrey H. Mercy Otis Warren. New York: Twayne Publishers,
1995.
Rubin Stuart, Nancy. The Muse of the Revolution: The Secret
Pen of Mercy Otis Warren and the Founding of a Nation. Boston:
Beacon Press, 2008. This is the best, and fullest life of Mrs.
Warren.
Zagarri, Rosemarie. A Woman's Dilemma Mercy Otis Warren and
the American Revolution. Wheeling, Ill.: Harlan Davidson,
1995. Good brief biography.
These are the most recent books on John and Abigail Adams:
Ellis, Joseph J. The Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy
of John Adams.
Ferling, John E. John Adams : A Life. Knoxville : University
of Tennessee Press, c1992.
Gelles, Edith Belle. First Thoughts : Life And Letters Of
Abigail Adams. New York : Twayne Publishers ; London : Prentice
Hall International, c1998. Includes chapter on Adams’ correspondence
with Mercy Warren
McCullough, David G. John Adams. New York : Simon &
Schuster, c2001.
For printed source materials that will help you and your students,
look at these volumes:
Adams Family Correspondence. L.H. Butterfield, et al.,
eds. Cambridge : Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1963-
.. 9 vols. to date, including the Adamses’ correspondence
with Mercy Warren and other friends and family members through
1793. – Most of these volumes are now also available online
(see below).
Correspondence between John Adams and Mercy Warren, including
an appendix of specimen pages from the History. New York:
Arno Press, 1972. This is a reprint of the nineteenth century
edition published by Charles Francis Adams. It may be a bit difficult
to find, but only their correspondence for the Revolutionary era
is available in the modern Adams Papers edition (now online, see
below), so this will be your only chance to share with your students
their later correspondence.
Papers of John Adams . Ed. by Robert J. Taylor, Gregg
Lint, et al. 14 vols. Cambridge, Mass. : Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press, 1977. To date, these volumes include Adams’s
correspondence on public matters (including those to James Otis
and James Warren) through 1783. Most of these volumes are now
also available online (see below).
Warren, Mercy Otis. The Rise, Progress and Termination of
the American Revolution, Interspersed with Biographical, Political
and Moral Observations. Ed. and Ann. by Lester H. Cohen (2
vols.) Liberty Classics, 1988 (modern reprint of orig. 1804 edition).
This is also available online (see below).
Unlikely as it seems, there are no modern book length biographies
of Mercy Warren’s troubled, brilliant brother, James Otis.
This is probably your best resource:
Morris, Richard B. 1962. ""Then and There the Child
Independence Was Born" [James Otis]". American Heritage.
13, no. 2: 36-39, 1962.
Internet Resources
Richard Selzer’s Website carries full texts of most of Warren’s
shorter writings, a chronology of her life, and a reproduction
of her portrait by Copley
http://www.samizdat.com/warren/
For the full text of her History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination
of the American Revolution (1805). (based on the 1994 reprint),
go to:
http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=
com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=1872
The Massachusetts Historical Society and the Adams Papers editors
have made online the full texts and editorial annotation of most
of the volumes published in this series over the last forty-five
years. They are part of the Society’s “Founding Families”
Website which includes access, as well, to the Winthrop Family
Papers:
http://www.masshist.org/ff/
To make your lives even easier, there is access through an electronic
cumulative index to the volumes. If you want to see a specific
item whose date you know, follow the Website’s suggestion
to use the “Browse” feature. If you’d just like
to have fun exploring, go to the Index. There you’ll first
click on the letter of the alphabet whose subject entries you
want to see; under each letter, you’ll find a guide to segments
of the entries (alphabetically, of course). Once you get to the
subject entry of your choice (probably Warren, Mercy Otis as a
start), you click to get a list of sub-entries and page references.
Click on the page number to go to the document. Sounds complicated,
but it isn’t. And you’ll have unbelievable documentary
riches (and wonderful annotation) as a reward.
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