author
Mary White Rowlandson
d. 1711
Best known for the captivity narrative that made her one of the earliest American memoirists, she wrote with stark detail about survival, faith, and colonial New England. Her account remained widely read for generations and still shapes how early American literature is taught.
2 Audiobooks
Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson
by Mary White Rowlandson
Captives among the Indians : first-hand narratives of Indian wars, customs, tortures, and habits of life in colonial times
by Francesco Giuseppe Bressani, Massy Harbison, Mary White Rowlandson, James Smith
About the author
Born Mary White around 1637 in England, she came to colonial New England as a child and later married the Puritan minister Joseph Rowlandson. In 1676, during King Philip’s War, she was captured in the attack on Lancaster, Massachusetts, and spent about eleven weeks in captivity before being ransomed.
After her release, she wrote The Sovereignty and Goodness of God, often known today as A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson. The book became one of the best-known captivity narratives in early American literature, blending personal ordeal, religious reflection, and scenes of everyday life on the frontier.
She later married Captain Samuel Talcott and lived in Connecticut. Mary Rowlandson died on January 5, 1711, and her writing remains important both as a personal survival story and as a window into Puritan beliefs, colonial conflict, and the beginnings of American autobiography.