Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson

Mary White Rowlandson 1682

A Puritan woman tells how she was captured in a 1676 raid on her Massachusetts town. During her captivity she meets the Native leader Metacom and sews a shirt for his son.

74 pages 1h 26m reading time

A founding work of the American captivity narrative.
Shows Rowlandson, seized in a raid during King Philip's War (the Wampanoag leader Metacom's uprising against New England's colonists), reading her suffering and ransom as tests and mercies from God.
Depicts Indigenous life in wartime, though always through her Puritan fears and prejudices.
It launched the captivity narrative, a genre that shaped American frontier stories and fiction for centuries.

Ransomed for twenty pounds

After nearly three months as a captive, she was freed for twenty pounds at what is now called Redemption Rock.
A minister's helping hand

Its unsigned preface is widely thought to be by the Boston minister Increase Mather, who likely urged its printing.
First printing nearly lost

Only eight pages of its first printing survive, found as lining inside another book's binding.
Paired with a sermon

Early editions also printed the last sermon of her husband Joseph, a minister who died before it came out.