Mayflower and Plymouth Colony Reading List

A wide range of source material exists on the Mayflower passengers and Plymouth colony. During our recent visit to Plimoth Plantation our tour guide Jim provided excellent recommendations for further study. I want to thank my friend and colleague Robin Wirthlin, who compiled this list during our tour:

• Berry, Lloyd Eason and William Whittingham. The Geneva Bible: A Facsimile of the 1560 Edition. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969.
• Bradford, William. Of Plymouth Plantation 1620 – 1647. New York: Random House, 1981.
• Bunker, Nick. Making Haste from Babylon: The Mayflower Pilgrims and Their World: A New History. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010.
• Hatcher, Patricia Law. Researching Your Colonial New England Ancestors. Provo, Utah: Ancestry, 2006.
• Heath, Dwight B., compiler. Mourt’s Relation: A Journal of the Pilgrims at Plymouth. Bedford, Massachusetts: Applewood Books, 1986.
• James, Sydney V. Three Visitors to Early Plymouth: Letters about the Pilgrim Settlement in New England During its First Seven Years. Plymouth, Mass.: Plimoth Plantation, 1963.
• Morgan, Edmund S. Visible Saints: The History of a Puritan Idea. New York: New York University Press, 1963.
• Morison, Samuel Eliot. Story of the "Old Colony" of New Plymouth, 1620-1692. New York: Knopf, 1956.
• Stratton, Eugene Aubrey. Plymouth Colony: Its History and People 1620 – 1691. Salt Lake City, Utah: Ancestry Publishing, 1986.
• Winslow, Edward. Good News from New England: with an exact relation of the first planting that countrey, a description of the profits accruing by the worke : together with a briefe, but true discovery of their order both in church and common-wealth, and maintenance allowed the painfull labourers in that vineyard of the Lord : with the names of the severall towns, and who be preachers to them. London: Printed by Matthew Simmons, 1648.

I would like to suggest three additional books that were not on our tour guide's list:

• Deetz, James and Patricia Scott Deetz. The Times of Their Lives: Life, Love, and Death in Plymouth Colony. New York: Random House, 2001.
• Philbrick, Nathaniel. Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War. New York: Viking, 2006.
• Van Zandt, Cynthia J. Brothers among Nations: The Pursuit of Intercultural Alliances in Early America, 1580-1660. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.

This reading list is also available on the Suggested Reading page of this blog. For additional information about our recent visit to Plimoth Plantation please visit my Plimoth Plantation Tour blog post.