Chapter 2: Early American Literature - William Byrd (1674-1744)

| Top |Primary Works

History of the Dividing Line betwixt Virginia and North Carolina (written in 1729); The Secret History of the Dividing Line.

The London diary, 1717-1721, and other writings. Eds. Louis B. Wright and Marion Tinling. NY, Oxford UP, 1958. F229 .B9685

Prose works; narratives of a colonial ciefinial Virginian. Ed. Louis B. Wright. Cambridge, Mass., Belknap Press, of Harvard UP, 1966. F229 .B963

Another secret diary of William Byrd of Westover, 1739-1741, with letters & literary exercises, 1696-1726. Ed. Maude H. Woodfin, translated and collated by Marion Tinling. Richmond, Va., The Dietz Press, inc., 1942. F229 .B9717

An essay upon the government of the English plantations on the continent of America (1701) An anonymous Virginian's proposals for liberty under the British crown, with two memoranda by William Byrd. Ed. Louis B. Wright. San Marino, Calif., The Huntington library, 1945. JK54 .E8

The Correspondence of the three William Byrds of Westover, Virginia, 1684-1776. Ed. Marion Tinling. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1977. F229 C8 (two volumes).

The great American gentleman: William Byrd of Westover in Virginia, his secret diary for the years 1709-1712. Eds. Louis B. Wright and Marion Tinling. NY, Putnam, 1963. F229 .B9716

Prose works; narratives of a colonial Virginian. Ed. Louis B. Wright. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1966. F229 .B963

| Top | Selected Bibliography

Arner, Robert D. "Style, Substance, and Self in William Byrd's Familiar Letters." Essays in Early Virginia Literature Honoring Richard Beale Davis. Ed. Joseph Lemay. NY: Franklin, 1977. 101-19.

- - -. "Westover and the Wilderness: William Byrd's Images of Virginia." Southern Literary Journal 7.2 (1975): 105-23.

Bain, Robert. "William Byrd of Westover." The History of Southern Literature. Ed. Louis D. Rubin. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1985. 48-56.

Breen, T. H. Shaping Southern Society: The Colonial Experience. NY: Oxford UP, 1976.

Conlin, Joseph R. "Another Side to William Byrd of Westover: An Explanation of the Food in His Secret Diaries." Virginia Cavalcade 26 (1977): 125-32.

Cutting, Rose M. John and William Bartram, William Byrd II and St. John de Crevecoeur: A Reference Guide. Boston: Hall, 1976. Z1231 .P8 C87

Davis, Richard B. "William Byrd: Taste and Tolerance." Major Writers of Early American Literature. Ed. Richard B. Davis. Madison: U. of Wis. P, 1972. 151-77.

Fields, Darin E. "William Byrd's 'History of the Dividing Line Betwixt Virginia and North Carolina Run in the Year of Our Lord 1728': A Genetic Text." DAI 53.9 (Mar 1993): 3212A DAI No.: DA9301774.

Folks, Jeffrey J. "Crowd Types in William Byrd's Histories." Southern Literary Journal 26.2 (Sprg 1994): 3-10. 

Inge, M. Thomas. "William Byrd of Westover: The First Southern Gentleman and Author." Virginia Cavalcade 37.1 (Sumr 1987): 4-15.

Jacobs, Robert D. "Tobacco Road: Lowlife and the Comic Tradition." The American South: Portrait of a Culture. Ed. Louis D. Rubin. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1980.

| Top | Lockridge, Kenneth A. The Diary, and Life, of William Byrd II of Virginia, 1674-1744. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1987.

- - -. On the Sources of Patriarchal Rage: The Commonplace Books of William Byrd and Thomas Jefferson and the Gendering of Power in the Eighteenth Century. NY: NY UP, 1992.

Maddock, Jane H. "By Way of Diversion: The Shifting Image of William Byrd of Westover." DAI 46.6 (Dec 1985): 1627A.

Manning, Susan. "Industry and Idleness in Colonial Virginia: A New Approach to William Byrd II." Journal of American Studies 28.2 (Aug 1994): 169-90.

Marambaud, Pierre. William Byrd of Westover: 1674-1744. Charlottesville: U. P. of Va., 1971. F229 B98 

Masterson, James R. "William Byrd in Lubberland." American Literature 9 (?): 153-70.

Mosher, Sally E. "Was William Byrd's 'The Battell' Composed for the Theater?" Elizabethan Review 3.1 (3.1 (Sprg-Sumr 1995): 32-36.

Nelson, Dana D. "Economies of Morality and Power: Reading 'Race' in Two Colonial Texts." A Mixed Race: Ethnicity in Early America. Ed. Frank Shuffelton. NY: Oxford UP, 1993.

Nettles, Margaret M. "The Land, the Self, and the Word: Verbal Landscapes in William Byrd's History of the Dividing Line, St. John de Creveceour's Letters from an American Farmer, and Washington Irving's A Tour of the Prairies." DAI 44.5 (Nov 1983): 44:5, 1455A.

Nicholls, Michael L. "Searching for Eden: William Byrd, the Switzers, and the Disaster of 1739." Virginia Cavalcade 36.2 (Autm 1986): 88-95.

Nickels, Cameron C. and John H. O'Neill. "Upon the Attribution of 'Upon a Fart' to William Byrd of Westover." Early American Literature 14 (1979): 143-48.

Pudaloff, Ross J. "'A Certain Amount of Excellent English': The Secret Diaries of William Byrd." The Southern Literary Journal 15 (1982): 101-19.

Robertson, Henry A., Jr. "A Critical Analysis of William Byrd II and His Literary Technique in The History of Dividing Line and The Secret History of the Line." DAI 28 (1967): 1407A.

Siebert, Donald T., Jr. "William Byrd's Histories of the Line: The Fashioning of a Hero." American Literature 47 (1976); 535-51.

Simpson, Lewis P. "William Byrd and the South." Early American Literature 7 (1972): 187-95.

Smith, David. "William Byrd Surveys America." Early American Literature 11 (1976): 296-310.

Wagner, Peter. "'The Female Creed': A New Reading of William Byrd's Ribald Parody." Early American Literature 19.2 (Fall 1984): 122-37.

Wright, Louis B. ed. The Prose Works of William Byrd of Westover: Narratives of a Colonial Virginian. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1966.

| Top | Comments on Byrd's Narrative (from Louis B. Wright above)

• Displays the keen and amused observations of a man interested in the world about him.
• Byrd's language is simple, direct, concrete, and idiomatic; his sentences are usually short and free of awkward constructions.
• He argues for miscegenation as the way to solve the Indian problem.

James R Masterson (listed above) notes how Byrd disparages not only the border country, but the whole province of North Carolina, grouped under six sections:

1. The inhabitants suffer disadvantages natural to their place of residence - swampy, mosquitoes.
2. Nature in North Carolina favors laziness.
3. Religion does not thrive there. There is no place to worship. The law empowers a justice of peace to marry, and christening depends on the casual arrival of a visiting churchman.
4. Government is weak there; laws are feebly executed and magistrates have little authority.
5. Such a province is a a natural asylum for outcasts.
6. In view of all this, it is not surprising that the borderers, when the line (between Virginia and North Carolina) is run, hope to find themselves on the Carolina side.

Study Question

1. Write an essay in which you compare and contrast Byrd's The Secret Diary with a work by any of his New England contemporaries. Does Byrd reveal a colonial consciousness that transcends a specifically Puritan ideology?

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Reuben, Paul P. "Chapter 2: William Byrd (1674-1744)." PAL: Perspectives in American Literature- A Research and Reference Guide. URL: http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap2/byrd.html (provide page date or date of your login).   | Top | Back | Chap 2 | Alphabetical List | Contents | PAL Home | Literature | Home |