Mary Rowlandson

Mary Rowlandson

Mary (White) Rowlandson (c. 1637 – January 1711) was a colonial American woman who was captured by Native Americans during King Philip's War and held for 11 weeks before being ransomed. Years after her release, she wrote a book about her experience, The Sovereignty and Goodness of God: Being a Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, which is considered a seminal American work in the literary genre of captivity narratives. It went through four printings in a short amount of time and garnered widespread readership, making it in effect the first American "bestseller."