
A Little Commonwealth
Family Life in Plymouth Colony
John Demos(Author)
Oxford University Press Inc
2nd Edition
Published on 30. September 1999
Book
Paperback/Softback
240 pages
978-0-19-512890-1 (ISBN)
Description
The year 2000 marks the thirtieth anniversary of the publication of A Little Commonwealth by Bancroft Prize-winning scholar John Demos. This groundbreaking study examines the family in the context of the colony founded by the Pilgrims who came over on the Mayflower. Basing his work on physical artifacts, wills, estate inventories, and a variety of legal and official enactments, Demos portrays the family as a structure of roles and relationships, emphasizing those of husband and wife, parent and child, and master and servant. The book's most startling insights come from a reconsideration of commonly-held views of American Puritans and of the ways in which they dealt with one another. Demos concludes that Puritan "repression" was not as strongly directed against sexuality as against the expression of hostile and aggressive impulses, and he shows how this pattern reflected prevalent modes of family life and child-rearing. The result is an in-depth study of the ordinary life of a colonial community, located in the broader environment of seventeenth-century America.
Demos has provided a new foreword and a list of further reading for this second edition, which will offer a new generation of readers access to this classic study.
Demos has provided a new foreword and a list of further reading for this second edition, which will offer a new generation of readers access to this classic study.
Reviews / Votes
"[A Little Commonwealth makes] our forebears come alive, not as cute, little democratic wind-up toys useful for indoctrinating children and Fourth of July speeches, but as irascible, intolerant, undemocratic, but real and fascinating human beings."--Commonweal"Demos writes with great charm, his easy, relaxed style having much muscle underneath."--National Review
"One of the finest pieces of local history that I have read in years....Because Demos writes clear, terse, flowing prose, his book will be a delight to the general reader as well as the scholar....[His] portrait of family life is captivating."--Saturday Review
More details
Edition
2nd Revised edition
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Edition type
Revised edition
Illustrations
15 halftones
Dimensions
Height: 203 mm
Width: 133 mm
Thickness: 13 mm
Weight
273 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-512890-1 (9780195128901)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
04/2010
2nd Edition
OUP eBook
€8.49
Available for download

E-Book
09/1999
2nd Edition
OUP eBook
€8.49
Available for download
Person
John Demos is Samuel Knight Professor of History at Yale University. He is the author of Entertaining Satan, winner of the Bancroft Prize, and The Unredeemed Capture
Author
Samuel Knight Professor of HistorySamuel Knight Professor of History, Yale University