SOURCE: "Colonial America," in The American Historical Novel, University of Oklahoma Press, 1950, pp. 21-67.

In the excerpt that follows, Leisy describes a number of historical novels written about the American colonies, maintaining that a majority of them focus on themes such as Puritanism, conflicts with Native Americans, and witchcraft.

The Southern Colonies

In the colonial South there was an abundance of incidents to invite romantic treatment by novelists. The arrival of the first white settlers in Virginia, the Carolinas, and Maryland; the Smith-Pocahontas romance; the Virginia Massacre of 1622; life in Jamestown under Governor Berkeley at the time of Bacon's Rebellion; events at the capital of Williamsburg; the Yemassee wars in Carolina—these, as well as the romantic careers of Virginia's Governor Spotswood and young Washington, were each the subject of historical fiction at one time or another.

The primacy of the Old Dominion made her a natural favorite...