SOURCE: “Of Plimmoth Plantation as a Literary Work,” in William Bradford, Twayne Publishers, 1978, pp. 122-40.

In this essay, Westbrook surveys Bradford's use of varied prose styles and literary devices, including metaphor and irony.

Bradford's minor prose and his poetry would receive scant notice, at least as belles-lettres, had they not come from the pen of the man who wrote Of Plimmoth Plantation. Their value lies in what they reveal of their author's mind and in the light they may cast on the values and ideals of early New England. Any assessment of Bradford's literary talents must be made on the basis of his History.

I. Early Impact of Bradford's History

Strangely, Of Plimmoth Plantation—by common consent the greatest history written in colonial America—did not appear in print until 1856. The story of the vicissitudes of the manuscript—what Samuel Eliot Morison calls the “History of a History...