William Bradford haunts us still, standing hazily glorious at the beginning of Puritan America. A separatist committed to community, the first communist and first anti-communist writer in American literature, a reluctant governor who begged off when he could but was repeatedly elevated at the insistence of Plymouth Colony, he remains a paradox. He represents one starting point for American literature, yet he subsumed his individual identity so thoroughly into the communal identity of the group that the work for which he is now principally remembered,
Of Plymouth Plantation, makes no mention of the death of his first wife, Dorothy May, his second marriage to the widow Alice Carpenter Southworth, or the births of his children. One of the few individual actions reported is quite humble and…
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Citation: Daly, Robert. "William Bradford". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 24 May 2008 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=532, accessed 23 November 2024.]
