Pamphlets of the American Revolution, 1750-1776, Volume I, 1750-1765

Edited by Bernard Bailyn

Assistant editor Jane N. Garrett

    With this reading of the American Revolutionary experience, the editor has substantially and profoundly altered the nature and direction of the inquiry on the American Revolution. In the process he has also erected a new framework for interpreting the entire first half-century of American national history. His edition of the pamphlets is a significant addition to the literature on the American Revolution; his general introduction is a landmark in American historiography.
       --American Quarterly

    Each pamphlet is introduced by a long editorial note that sketches the life of the author (or putative author), establishes the context of the documents, interprets it, and evaluates its influence. The texts, while modernized, are scrupulously handled and annotated...The principal elements of Bailyn's interpretation...are analyzed with remarkable subtlety and penetration...the most enlightened interpretation of Revolutionary ideology to appear in many years.
       --American Historical Review

    The two-hundred page introductory essay of the editor, drawing upon a vast body of literature, is an interpretive summation of the political ideas of the entire period, and it is a distinguished achievement. Mr. Bailyn writes with the authority and integrity that derive from a thorough mastery of the material. His meticulous scholarship is matched with perceptive analysis, and the result is an illuminating survey of Revolutionary thought.
       --New York Review of Books

  • Cover: Pamphlets of the American Revolution, 1750-1776, Volume I, 1750-1765

Photo of Bernard Bailyn

Bernard Bailyn is Adams University Professor, Emeritus, and Director of the International Seminar on the History of the Atlantic World Harvard University. He is the author of numerous books, including The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Pulitzer and Bancroft Prizes) and The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson (National Book Award), both published by Harvard.