A Character of the Province of Maryland

Alsop, George, 1638-Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.9
Word count
164K words
Chapters
17

Tags

English Originals World History Historical ReappraisalPolitical AllegoryColonial SocietyPortrait GallerySocial CritiqueDocumentary NarrativeSatirical StyleColonial AmericaRegional CultureSocial Observation

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.A Character of the Province of Maryland by George AlsopAuthor: Alsop, George, 1638-,Language: English, Class: F106: United States local history: Atlantic coast. Middle Atlantic States, Release Date: Aug 30, 2018

Editor's review

A Character of the Province of Maryland is a mid-seventeenth-century account of the colony with autobiographical elements, published by George Alsop and made available as a free ebook by Project Gutenberg. Drawing on the author's personal experience, it describes Maryland's geography, products, social customs, and colonial governance in a tone marked by clear personal bias and defensiveness; it is not a neutral official record. Its value lies in offering an early North American colonial text from a participant's perspective, allowing readers to observe how Europeans of the time described the natural and human world of the New World and to sense how colonial promotion and personal stance intertwined in the narrative. The book is in seventeenth-century English, with sentence structures and spelling preserved as in the original, requiring some patience and background knowledge. It is suitable as supplementary material for the study of early American history, colonial literature, and historical writing, and also for readers interested in seventeenth-century English texts. It should be used in comparison with later historical research, taking care to distinguish eyewitness record from the author's subjective construction.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Not a good fit for

Reading tips

  1. Read the introduction or a relevant historical overview first to understand the author's identity and writing context before entering the main text
  2. Excerpt passages on geography, products, and customs by topic and read them against later research
  3. Mark early spellings and unfamiliar words first, then look them up together after a full read-through
  4. Pay attention to the defensive and promotional tone in the narrative and practice distinguishing observation from stance

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17

FAQ

Is this book a reliable historical source? It is a valuable participant text, but it carries clear personal stance and colonial promotional coloring and cannot be cited directly as a neutral archive. A safer use is to treat it as a sample of historical writing, comparing it with later historical research and other contemporary materials to distinguish observation, exaggeration, and defense.
Is seventeenth-century English difficult to read? It will be somewhat difficult. The book preserves early modern spelling, syntax, and punctuation habits, and some vocabulary is no longer commonly used today. It is advisable to read the background introduction first, then proceed section by section with a dictionary and notes, without insisting on reading every word; grasping core passages on geography, products, and customs is enough.
Is this book suitable for coursework? It is suitable as a supplementary primary text for courses on early North American colonial history or colonial literature, especially for discourse analysis and historical writing exercises. It should be used under a teacher's guidance together with secondary research, with clear citation conventions, avoiding treating the author's personal statements as established fact.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Alsop, George, 1638- Author

George Alsop (1638–?), a seventeenth-century English author, is known through limited surviving biographical information; his dates and nationality cannot be established with certainty, and public sources remain sparse. He is remembered for A Character of the Province of Maryland, the one work by him held in this collection. Drawing on personal observation, the book describes the natural environment, society, and immigrant life of colonial Maryland in a personal, partly promotional style that blends reportage with advocacy. It remains a valuable primary source for understanding the early English Chesapeake region. Given the scarce historical record, his writing background and influence await further study.