author
Wesley Frank Craven
1905–1981
A leading historian of colonial America, he wrote clear, influential books on the English colonies and later helped shape the official multi-volume history of the U.S. Army Air Forces in World War II. His work is known for connecting careful scholarship with a broad view of how early America developed.
1 Audiobook
The Virginia Company Of London, 1606-1624
by Wesley Frank Craven
About the author
Born in North Carolina in 1905, Wesley Frank Craven built an unusually fast academic career, earning degrees from Duke and Cornell before beginning a long teaching career. He taught at New York University and later at Princeton, where he became known as a distinguished scholar of early American history.
Craven wrote widely on colonial America, with books including The Southern Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, The Colonies in Transition, 1660–1713, and White, Red, and Black. His work often focused on the political, social, and cultural forces that shaped the English colonies, especially in the South.
During and after World War II, he also moved beyond colonial history to co-edit the major seven-volume series The Army Air Forces in World War II with James Lea Cate. He died in 1981, leaving behind a body of writing that helped generations of readers and students understand both colonial America and a crucial chapter of twentieth-century history.