Clark, Ronald W. Benjamin Franklin. New York: Random House, 1983. Clark focuses on Franklin's career, presenting him as a kind of obsessed genius who dedicated himself fully to the project at hand. Franklin was not above dissimulation and grandstanding.

Huang, Nian-Sheng. Benjamin Franklin in American Thought and Culture: 1790-1990. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1994. The book explores the diverse legacy of Franklin and his impact on American culture and thought. Huang investigates the wide range of interpretations of Franklin through the years, and explains them as products of the cultural context in which they were written. His defense of Franklin against D.H. Lawrence might be especially of interest. Includes a large bibliography.

Lawrence, D.H. "Benjamin Franklin." in his Studies in Classic American Literature. 1923. New York: Penguin, 1977. 15-27. Quoted above, Lawrence's classic and scathing attack on Franklin.

Lemay, J.A. Leo, ed. The Oldest Revolutionary: Essays on Benjamin Franklin. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1976. This collection groups essays under three categories: Franklin in Action – Printer, Press Agent, Traveler; Franklin as Writer; and Franklin in Retrospect. Essays of particular interest might include the two essays on the Autobiography (P.M. Zall, David Parker), the Cameron Nickels's essay on Poor Richard's Almanac, Lemay's article on "The Speech of Miss Polly Baker," and William Hedges's "From Franklin to Emerson."

---, ed. Reappraising Benjamin Franklin: A Bicentennial Perspective. Newark: U of Delaware P, 1993. Twenty-four essays divided into six categories, introductions to each category, a useful chronology, and a twenty-page bibliography comprise this excellent collection. This might be a good source for students beginning research on Franklin.

Seavey, Ormond. Becoming Benjamin Franklin: The Autobiography and the Life. University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 1988. This book studies the discrepancies between the Autobiography's ordered, directed presentation of experience and the complexities and confusions of Franklin's actual life. The first part of the book, some one hundred pages, examines the Autobiography for its rhetoric and Enlightenment notions about character and self; the second half concerns Franklin's life and his attempts to live up to his self-depiction.

Fruchtman, Jack. Thomas Paine: Apostle of Freedom. New York: Four Walls, 1994. This study argues that there are no disparities between Paine's daily activities and his political and religious principles. Fruchtman contends that Paine's life as a journalist imparted to him his character and style.

McKown, Robin. Thomas Paine. New York: G.P. Putnam, 1962. At the time of writing, McKown thought Paine badly neglected. He presents Paine's life as glorious, but tragic. Far ahead of his time, Paine proposed a series of social security measures, universal education of the young, welfare aid for the poor, government pensions for the aged, and allotments for young married couples.

Norman, Charles J. Introduction. The Crisis Papers. By Thomas Paine. Albany: NCUP, 1990. i-xlv. As well as a discussion of the text of The Crisis and American Revolutionary propaganda, this essay includes biographical information and places Paine in his sociological and historical context. "Norman concludes: Paine defies easy categorization: no great writer he, but one of the most powerful; no atheist, but certainly no Christian; no social leveler, but a radical reformer; patriot unsurpassed, but a citizen of the world."

Powell, J. H. "The War of the Pamphlets." Literary History of the United States. Eds. Robert E. Spiller, et. al. 4th ed. rev. New York: Macmillan, 1974. 131-45. This essay discusses the importance of pamphlets in the Revolutionary era. The pages concerning Paine provide an excellent introduction to Paine's life, his writings, and the impact of his work.

Thompson, Ira M. The Religious Beliefs of Thomas Paine. New York: Vantage, 1965.

Thompson considers Paine to be not an atheist, but an individual of religious fervor, strength and devotion, and "the last outstanding advocate of the deistic movement."

Williamson, Audrey. Thomas Paine: His Life, Work and Times. New York: St. Martin's, 1973. Williamson considers Paine primarily as writer, humanitarian, political philosopher, and reformer. She also tries to consider Paine's English background more completely than previous biographers, as his Englishness had a formative effect on his character and outlook. Williamson considers The Age of Reason the least great expression of the enlightenment.

Woll, Walter. Thomas Paine: Motives for Rebellion. New York: Peter Lang, 1992. Woll discusses Paine's reasons for becoming a revolutionary, as well as his image since the Revolution and his religious convictions. Of special interest might be the sections of the book that concern Paine's views of American Indians (uncivilized peoples in need of education) and blacks (Paine called slavery "contrary to the light of nature, to every principle of Justice and Humanity").

Harper, Francis. Introduction, Commentary, and Annotated Index. The Travels of William Bartram. By William Bartram. New Haven: Yale UP, 1958. Harper provides biographical details, as well as information on the preparation, publication, and reception of Travels. Harper also provides one hundred pages of commentary which clarifies and interprets passages in the text, mainly from a naturalist's perspective.

Ziff, Larzer. "Realizing the Landscape." in his Writing in the New Nation. New Haven: Yale UP, 1991. 34-53. Ziff reads Bartram's nature as a metaphor for America. "The absence of ruins argued for an American history undetermined by the past, a history that could actually begin at the beginning . . . Unlike the America of Edwards, one that was newly discovered in order to fulfill the already written history of redemption, this America exists independent of the rest of the world, its ancient monuments prompting no conclusion other than that time is yet to begin there."

Drawing on over two thousand of Abigail's letters, this biography depicts a warm, discerning intellect concerned with all the major issues of her day and all time: not only the Revolution, domestic politics and foreign courts, but also war, pregnancy, childbirth, women's rights and second-class status, and the place of religion and morality in America.

Ellis, Joseph J. Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams. New York: Norton, 1993. Ellis offers a balanced response to the question of Adams's character, as largely framed by Hamilton: how could one of the leading lights in the founding generation exhibit such massive leaps in personal stability? How could the man, who next to Washington, did most to assure the independence of the United States, strike so many of his contemporaries, friends and enemies alike, as a wild man, "liable to gusts of passion little short of frenzy, which drive him beyond the control of any rational reflection?" (quoting Hamilton).

Gelles, Edith B. Portia: The World of Abigail Adams. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1992.

Gelles removes John Adams from the center of this biography to write as much a social and cultural history of the times, which provides insight into the lives of eighteenth-century women. Each chapter considers a single facet or topic in Abigail's life: including "Domestic Patriotism," "Gossip," "Mother and Citizen," and "My Closest Companion," which concerns her relationship with her daughter. Gelles considers Abigail's letters to John and others to be writing for therapy in John's absence. She did not write for posterity, but for herself and so often requested that her letters be burned: "You will burn all these letters least they expose your affectionate friend" (to John, 16 Sept. 1774). Gelles considers her letters her best biography.

Levin, Phyllis Lee. Abigail Adams: A Biography. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987.

Refusing to allow herself to be tied to a circle of domestic activity, Abigail formed with John a broad partnership, one that blended their public and private pursuits with the emotional, philosophical, and political. Lee's keynote comes from Abigail herself: "Such talents and such devotion of time and study exclude the performance of most of the domestic cares and duties which exclusively fall to the lot of most females in this country."

Peterson, Merrill D. Adams and Jefferson: A Revolutionary Dialogue. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1976. Both Adams and Jefferson devoted themselves to the new experiment in freedom and self-government, but their ideas on human nature, history, society, and government included many differences. After Jefferson's election in 1800, their friendship broke before its reconciliation some eleven years later when their remarkable correspondence began.

Shaw, Peter. The Character of John Adams. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1976.

Shaw places Adams and his great accomplishments and dedicated public service in the context of his place and time, but also considers him in light of his Puritan intellect and strong emotions. Adams is not the judicious political leader and political scientist many believe. He could be explosive of temper, barbed in his criticism of others, envious, and awkward in social settings, not a suitable temperament for politics. Shaw notes that some incomplete interpretations of Adams's character resulted because the unexpurgated Adams's Papers were not available to researchers until the 1950s.

Cunningham, Noble E. In Pursuit of Reason: The Life of Thomas Jefferson. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1987. A one-volume biography intended for the informed reader, student, and scholar. Cunningham focuses throughout on Jefferson's strongest belief: "the sufficiency of reason for the care of human affairs" (quoting Jefferson). His faith in reason nourished his belief in progress, formed his political principles, explained his devotion to learning, and sustained an optimism which only left him at the very end of his life.

Fliegelman, Jay. Declaring Independence: Jefferson, Natural Language & The Culture of Performance. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1993. As the title suggests, this study examines the Declaration not just as artifact, but as a rhetorical performance. The Declaration was written to be read aloud, which is a crucial clue to elements of its meaning and to its rhetorical strategies. Jefferson was expected to read the Declaration to the assembled Continental Congress, and there is evidence that he thought long and hard over how it should be "performed."

Lehmann, Karl. Thomas Jefferson: American Humanist. 1947. Charlottesville: U of Virginia, 1985. To Jefferson, a dialogue with the arts and philosophy of the ancient world was a means to self development. His writings contain pieces of a mosaic that when culled and reconstructed (which Lehmann does), form a picture of ancient civilization. This book demonstrates that the ancient world profoundly influenced Jefferson and his concept of Americanism and civilization.

Lerner, Max. Thomas Jefferson: America's Philosopher-King. New Brunswick: Transaction, 1996. Lerner sees Jefferson as closest in the new republic to Plato's concept of the "philosopher-king," that is a thinker and leader, although Jefferson was a devoted democrat, unwaveringly opposed to the creation of an American monarchy.

Malone, Dumas. Jefferson and His Time. 6 vols. Boston: Little, Brown. 1948-1981. The authoritative and most complete biography.

Miller, Charles A. Jefferson and Nature: An Interpretation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1988. The words "nature" and "natural" appear more frequently, more variously, and more seriously in Jefferson's writings than in those of his contemporaries. Jefferson discussed natural history, natural theology, natural morality, natural law, and natural right. For Jefferson, nature is America, and his interest in nature therefore a form of nationalism. This work explores Jefferson's various uses of the term and the implications of the usage.

Peterson, Merrill. Adams and Jefferson: A Revolutionary Dialogue. [Full entry appears under Adams.]

Simpson, Lewis P. "Jefferson and the Writing of the South." Columbia Literary History of the United States. Gen. ed. Emory Elliott. New York: Columbia UP, 1988. 127-35. This essay explores how Jefferson dedicated his life to freedom of the mind and established Monticello as the prime symbol in America of the plantation as a literary and intellectual domain, but a domain with slaves. Echoing Robert Penn Warren, the essay concludes that in his attempt to suppress history, Jefferson expressed the quintessential anxiety about freedom, slavery, and the identity of the writer that marks modern literature

Swancara, Frank. Thomas Jefferson Versus Religious Oppression. New York: University Books, 1969. This study considers Jefferson's Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom [in Virginia] and contrasts the histories of religious persecution by states with and without a similar statute. Swancara cites cases of religious persecution from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Edwards, Paul, ed. Introduction. The Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa the African. By Olaudah Equiano. Essex, UK: Longman, 1988. vi-xxxvi. Although not conceived as an art work, Equiano's Narrative effectively uses echoes, ironic parallelings, dramatizations of the younger self, and tensions resulting from conflicting desires for a father and for the rejection of the paternalistic benefactor. Equiano's skill lies in contemplating his past and making sense of it. The last chapter, "a tangle of loose ends," may not be aesthetically pleasing, but it reflects Equiano's "continuing, driving, animated life."

Gates, Henry Louis. Foreword. "In Her Own Write." The Collected Works of Phillis Wheatley. Ed. John Shields. New York: Oxford UP, 1988. vii-xxii. Gates considers Wheatley a pioneer who launched two traditions: the black American literary tradition and the black woman's literary tradition. The essay introduces readers to little known black writers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Mason, Julian, ed. and intro. The Poems of Phillis Wheatley. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1989. 1-34. The introduction provides biographical information; considers Wheatley as an occasional poet, a good and clever craftsman; influences on her work; and her poetic technique. A second essay, "On the Reputation of Phillis Wheatley, Poet," summarizes the treatment of Wheatley's poetry since publication with emphasis on nineteenth-century considerations.

Robinson, William H., ed. Critical Essays on Phillis Wheatley. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1982.

This collection includes some fifty short essays, reviews and commentaries from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and some dozen full-length essays from more recent years with several written for the collection.

Shields, John. "Phillis Wheatley's Struggle for Freedom in Her Poetry and Prose." in his The Collected Works of Phillis Wheatley. 227-70. This essay considers four ways that Wheatley articulates the theme of freedom and her intense desire operates for freedom in her poetry: through her passionate political statements supporting America against England, her use of what Jung called the mandala archetype, her contemplative elegies in which freedom was promised in the next world, and her poetics of the imagination and sublime.

Dietze, Gottfried. The Federalist: A Classic on Federalism and Free Government. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1960. A comprehensive analysis on The Federalist, "the outstanding American contribution to the literature on constitutional democracy and federalism, a classic of Western political thought." The book considers the historical context of The Federalist and the works place in political theory. The essays, believes Dietze, "advance beyond the orthodox conception of the purpose of federation, by advocating federation not only as a means for maintaining the security of the federating states from foreign powers or peace among the members, but also – and especially – as a means for securing the individual's freedom from governmental control."

Epstein, David F. The Political Theory of The Federalist. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1984. While The Federalist was written by men who favored a new Constitution and addressed to those with the authority to decide on a new Constitution, the authors of the essays did not take for granted that this "wholly elective form of government" with this new Constitution was justified, possible, or certain to succeed. This uncertainty resulted in vigorous essays. This study includes an approximately fifty-page discussion on the most famous essay, "Federalist No. 10."

Furtwangler, Albert. The Authority of Publius: A Reading of the Federalist Papers. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1984. This study focuses on the rhetorical strategies of Hamilton, Madison, and Jay, and explains how the composite figure of Publius gives a special character and coherence to their arguments. Furtwangler argues that the closer the reader looks at The Federalist, the more the reader becomes aware of the authors' inconsistencies with each other and themselves. However, the essays' "awareness of conscientious opposition is reflected in a unique tone of respectful, serious, generous, full argument" and "the eighty-five papers stand out as a brilliant exercise of freedom of the press, a bright culmination of decades of developing journalism. The whole enterprise reflects a dynamic interplay of challenges and answers, promises scrupulously kept, and outlines modified by growth."

Storing, Herbert J., ed. Introduction. The Anti-Federalist. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1981. This work contains a collection of speeches, letters, and essays written by Anti-Federalists like Agrippa, A [Maryland] Farmer, Brutus, Patrick Henry, and others. Introductions precede each author. Storing's presentation is sympathetic without being political. He tries to correct the perception that the Anti-Federalists were narrow-minded and provincial individuals with little vision and confidence in the possibility of an American national self-government. Storing's volume demonstrates that there were a wide range of opinions among the Anti-Federalists – as among the Federalists. Storing endorses (but without the scorn) Hamilton's scornful claim that the Anti-Federalists tried to reconcile contradictions: commitment to both union and state, the great republic and the small, self- governing community; to both commerce and civic virtue; to both private gain and public good. Such contradictions are inherent in the principles and traditions of American political life.

Wills, Garry. Explaining America: The Federalist. Garden City: Doubleday, 1981. Wills argues that Madison and Hamilton, later political adversaries, based their political theory on David Hume's political essays and his "conception of government as a utilitarian division of labor with a generally benevolent set of social ties." The Federalist helps to explain America, and, historically, America has to be explained in terms of the Enlightenment – a world of the classical virtues reborn, of optimism about man's effort to order society rationally, and of a new science of man. The Enlightenment was the world of encyclopedists who believed that error would yield to truth, and superstition would be defeated by curious inquiry. The code of public virtue should be espoused without embarrassment by its most distinguished leaders – "and the place to begin that effort is, indeed, with 'Publius,' the man of the people, the public man."

Leary, Lewis. That Rascal Freneau: A Study in Literary Failure. 1941. New York: Octagon, 1964. "Philip Freneau failed in almost everything he attempted," so begins this biography. Leary explains that Freneau was a poet in an age that had little room for poetry. As a result, Freneau had to compromise his highest aspiration with political activity. He tried futilely to adapt himself to an essentially uninterested public, and consistently failed.

Vitzthum, Richard C. Land and Sea: The Lyric Poetry of Philip Freneau. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1978. Freneau obscures his own poetic achievement by capitalizing on his war time reputation as American propagandist, which led him to entitle his poetry collections Poems of Philip Freneau Written Chiefly during the Late War, 1786 (half the poems had nothing to do with the war) and Poems Written and Published during the American Revolutionary War, 1809 (two-thirds were not). This self-promotion led him to revise his poems to exploit his Revolutionary activity. In the process, however, Freneau directs his reader's attention away from his most important poetic achievement, a self-revelation through a system of symbolism unique in the late eighteenth century, a system which, at its core, employs imagery of the male-sea and female-land.

Ford, Arthur L. Joel Barlow. New York: Twayne, 1971. Ford discusses Barlow's shift from conservative Protestant-Federalist to Deistic-Jeffersonian. He states that The Hasty-Pudding and "Advice to Raven in Russian" contain some of the best poetry written during the era. "Advice to a Raven" is called "an outburst of powerful feeling recollected in tranquility but shouted in the midst of an agonizing moment."

Howard, Leon. The Connecticut Wits. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1943. Howard's study focuses on John Trumbull, Timothy Dwight, David Humphreys, and Joel Barlow as authors rather than politicians, lawyers, ministers, or educators. Howard describes The Hasty-Pudding as "an overflow of whimsicality rather than of powerful feeling, [although] the poem reflects a Wordsworthian experience." Through the power of association, Barlow was calling up the common pleasures of his boyish days and finding a release from boredom and loneliness. The mock heroic is comparable to Edward Phillips's Cyder.

Lemay, J. A. Leo. "The Contexts and Themes of 'The Hasty-Pudding.'" Early American Literature 17 (1982): 3-23. Lemay argues that The Hasty-Pudding reflects late eighteenth-century avante-garde, radical thought; that politics, language, religion, and myth are philosophical subjects of the poem; that it concerns the nature of men and the basis of culture; and that the poem's primary theme parallels the fundamental thinking of Johann Gottfried von Herder, a basic theorist of nineteenth-century culture. The Hasty-Pudding also anticipates later American subjects and themes: the celebration of the common man and commonplace folk themes and folk culture, prefiguring Whitman, Whittier, and the prose of Howells and the American realists. The poetic use of the gods, mythology, and the archetypes of rural experience look ahead to the major American romantic writers. But, Lemay suggests, Barlow is closest to the Hemingway of In Our Time, especially in those stories when the narrative voice looks back, "across the gulf of his European war experiences, [to] find permanent, affirmative values in simple, ritualistic reenactments of his innocent boyhood initiations."

Carson, Ada Lou and Herbert L. Carson. Royall Tyler. Boston: Twayne, 1979. This study includes a survey of Tyler's life, a chapter on The Contrast with information on production, critical views, and analysis; commentary on two Tyler works in need of rediscovery (his novel The Algerine Captive and his autobiography The Bay Boy), and chapters on his satire, miscellaneous prose, and poetry. Includes a helpful bibliography.

Richards, Jeffrey. Theater Enough: American Culture and the Metaphor of the World Stage, 1607-1789. Durham: Duke UP, 1991. This study explores the use of theater as a rhetorical figure for colonists and American-born writers to express their version of life in the New World. Cotton Mather, for instance, sees God's works as "Theatre enough," and James Madison refers to America as God's theater. The Contrast, however, marks a counterturn from the vision of America as idealized stage. "Using a foreign vehicle though mocking foreign manners, and appealing to an audience with worldly tastes while celebrating homespun localism, the playwright features antitheatrical native heroes in a form – the stage comedy of manners – that exposes them to deflation. The result is a propaganda drama that entertains – or is it entertainment with a dose of patriotism tossed in?"

Richardson, Gary A. American Drama from the Colonial Period through World War I. New York: Twayne, 1993. 46-52. While Tyler's drama is in many ways imitative of English models, the language and speech patterns of its characters are culturally diverse, ranging from the Chesterfield imitation of Dimple, the moral bombast of Maria and Manly to the American, but provincial and limited language of Jonathan and Van Rough. "Linguistically, Tyler suggests, America has yet to find a voice with which to address the world."

Siebert, Donald T. "Royall Tyler's 'Bold Example': The Contrast and the English Comedy of Manners." Early American Literature 13 (1978): 3-11. Siebert disputes the usual interpretation of The Contrast as a play which holds up the American over the European or the naif over the man of the world. No character in the play is truly European or a polished citizen of the world. "The purpose of The Contrast is therefore not to lavish praise on American innocence while exposing and condemning European corruption and polish. Rather, the play reveals the contrast between Americans who are themselves and those who try to be something they are not, between dowdy virtue and supposedly fashionable deceit and selfishness, between independence and servility. It seeks to give Americans an uncompromising look at themselves for the purpose of taking stock." Tyler wants Americans to examine themselves and "ground their new political liberty on an independence of spirit."

Silverman, Kenneth. A Cultural History of the American Revolution. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1976. This realistic comedy of American life represents the most distinctively American literary work of the eighteenth century. Moreso than many diaries and journals of the period, the play brings together the many social, political, and local issues of the day. In Jonathan, Tyler transforms the stock comic servant into the archetypal Yankee.

Tanselle, G. Thomas. Royall Tyler. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1967. Tyler illustrates the dilemma faced by many literary men of the young nation: more pressing concerns kept belles-lettres from being little more than a pastime. But although Tyler was a lawyer first and a writer second, he was dedicated in principle and practice to a native literature. Tanselle believes the creation of Jonathan in The Contrast did more for the cultural development of the young republic than all the self-conscious pleas for a native literature declaimed by Tyler and others before him.

Christophersen, Bill. The Apparition in the Glass: Charles Brockden Brown's American Gothic. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1993. Christophersen also focuses on Brown's major novels and argues that Brown's Americanness results not from his folk characters, dialects and settings, but from the psychological, philosophical, moral, and sociopolitical dilemmas central to the America of his time. Edgar Huntly proposes that "self-awareness unleashes vice. . . Brown's symbol for both the individual and the society . . . is the sleepwalker, navigating blindly, precariously entranced, yet infinitely dangerous to awaken. . . A repudiation of self-scrutiny, Edgar Huntly alone, of all Brown's books, shows us not only the ghouls that inhabit our souls, but the prohibitive consequences of looking at them" (italics his).

Ringe, Donald A. Charles Brockden Brown. 1966. Rev. ed. New York: Twayne, 1991. While Ringe includes biographical material and historical information, he is primarily concerned with critical analysis of the major novels. In Edgar Huntly and Wieland (his best novel), Brown points ahead to similar works of Poe and Hawthorne in which the psychological state of the characters is projected through the Gothic mode.

Rosenthal, Bernard, ed. Critical Essays on Charles Brockden Brown. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1981. This collection includes brief early essays by, among others, Richard Henry Dana, William Hazlitt, and Margaret Fuller, and eight original essays, including Paul Witherington's "'Not My Tongue Only': Form and Language in Brown's Edgar Huntly," which argues that Brown experimented with language by stretching the voices in Edgar Huntly between the traditional pose of a narrator verbally enfeebled by an overwhelming situation and a narrator who is on his way to forging a new language. A lengthy bibliography is included.

Watts, Steven. The Romance of Real Life: Charles Brockden and the Origins of American Culture. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1994. This study reconstructs the life and writings of Brown in terms of their cultural connections. By studying his earlier and later writings, Watts gains a new perspective on the well-known novels of the late 1790s. A closing bibliographic essay comments on Brown criticism over the years.