SOURCE: “William Bradford, as Author, Man, and Statesman,” in “Mayflower” Essays on The Story of the Pilgrim Fathers, Ward & Downey Ltd., 1896, pp. 100-29.

In this excerpt, published only a few decades after the discovery of the Bradford manuscript, Blaxland offers one of the earliest scholarly discussions of Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation. Blaxland considers Bradford's style and influences, and attempts to show a deep connection between Bradford the individual and Bradford the historian.

In the History of Plymouth Plantation we have William Bradford presented to us in the aspect of author, autobiographer, and historian. Of course the History is the chief, indeed the only consciously undertaken object of his writing. And as a history, from the importance of the events he chronicles and from his unique relation to them, as well as from its own intrinsic merit, his work is beyond price. But a history of events so essentially...