For nearly 400 years, New England has held an important place in the development of American English, and "New England accents" are very well known in popular imagination. This book is the first large-scale academic project since the 1930s to focus specifically on New England English as a whole. It presents new variationist sociolinguistic research covering all six New England states, with detailed geographic, acoustic phonetic, and statistical analyses of recently collected data from over 1,600 New Englanders. The book systematically documents major traditional New England dialect features and their current usage in terms of location, age, gender, ethnicity, social class, and other factors.

For nearly 400 years, New England has held an important place in the development of American English, and "New England accents" are very well known in the popular imagination. While other projects have studied various dialect regions of New England, this is the first large-scale academic project since the 1930s to focus specifically on New England English as a whole. In New England English, James N. Stanford presents new variationist sociolinguistic research covering all six New England states, with detailed geographic, acoustic phonetic, and statistical analyses of recently collected data from over 1,600 New Englanders. Stanford and his team of Dartmouth students built this dataset over 8 years of face-to-face fieldwork and online audio recordings and questionnaires. Using acoustic phonetics, computational processing, and dialect maps, the book systematically documents major traditional New England dialect features and their current usage in terms of geography, age, gender, ethnicity, social class, and other factors. This dataset is interpreted in terms of William Labov's outward orientation of the language faculty, dialect levelling, convergence and divergence, and "Hub social geometry." The result is a wide-ranging empirical analysis and theoretical overview of this influential English dialect region.

The publication of the narrative accounts of the voyages of Gisnold (1602) and Waymouth (1605) opened up for English readers what was then known as Norumbega, the later New England; They are the first documents of exploration of that region to have been published since that of Verrazzano's voyage (1524) in 1556. To the accounts of these voyages by John Brereton and James Rosier there was added by Purchas in 1625 the material of Martin Pring's voyage of 1603 and some scraps of information on the attempted colony by the Virginia Company of Plymouth at Sagadahoc on the Kennebec River in 1607-1608. The narrative of the voyage of the Mary and John, discovered in the 19th century, and now attributed to Robert Davies, remains our main authority for the 1607 voyage. Many ancillary documents are added to these essential sources. Most of these narratives have been edited in the distant past but they are now furnished with full information on fauna, flora, and above all, ethnography. The material which has become available on Indians of both northern and southern New England has enabled a full account to be given of them, while expert advice has been obtained in the edition of the Eastern Abenaki vocabulary of 1605. Considerable attention has been paid to topographical problems, to which new solutions are offered in a number of cases (though conflicting views are discussed in an appendix). The volume thus makes up a collection which is basic for the understanding of how Englishmen began to explore New England (and how its inhabitants learnt something of the English) and on how that important territory first came to light in detail. The narratives are of great interest in themselves and the biographical information which it has been possible to assemble in the introduction about a number of the authors and actors in the voyages and the colonising attempt of 1607 is valuable in enabling the reader to understand what they wrote and what they omitted. Professor and Mrs Quinn have worked on this volume for a number of years and their introduction and notes constitute an important addition to our knowledge.

In Brethren by Nature, Margaret Ellen Newell reveals a little-known aspect of American history: English colonists in New England enslaved thousands of Indians. Massachusetts became the first English colony to legalize slavery in 1641, and the colonists' desire for slaves shaped the major New England Indian wars, including the Pequot War of 1637, King Philip's War of 1675–76, and the northeastern Wabanaki conflicts of 1676–1749. When the wartime conquest of Indians ceased, New Englanders turned to the courts to get control of their labor, or imported Indians from Florida and the Carolinas, or simply claimed free Indians as slaves.Drawing on letters, diaries, newspapers, and court records, Newell recovers the slaves' own stories and shows how they influenced New England society in crucial ways. Indians lived in English homes, raised English children, and manned colonial armies, farms, and fleets, exposing their captors to Native religion, foods, and technology. Some achieved freedom and power in this new colonial culture, but others experienced violence, surveillance, and family separations. Newell also explains how slavery linked the fate of Africans and Indians. The trade in Indian captives connected New England to Caribbean and Atlantic slave economies. Indians labored on sugar plantations in Jamaica, tended fields in the Azores, and rowed English naval galleys in Tangier. Indian slaves outnumbered Africans within New England before 1700, but the balance soon shifted. Fearful of the growing African population, local governments stripped Indian and African servants and slaves of legal rights and personal freedoms. Nevertheless, because Indians remained a significant part of the slave population, the New England colonies did not adopt all of the rigid racial laws typical of slave societies in Virginia and Barbados. Newell finds that second- and third-generation Indian slaves fought their enslavement and claimed citizenship in cases that had implications for all enslaved peoples in eighteenth-century America.

One of America's earliest books and one of the most important early Pilgrim tracts to come from American colonies. This book helped persuade others to come join those who already came to Plymouth.

The New England states are a pretty close-knit groupin fact, you could conceivably hop in the car and eat your way through all six states in a single day. Fortunately there's The New England Tablean easier way to enjoy the bounty of the northeast. Celebrated author of The Cape Cod Table and Boston area resident Lora Brody has combed Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut to share the wonderful dishes this rugged region is especially proud offrom traditional favorites such as Boston Baked Beans to enticing modern classics such as Red Flannel Salmon Hash or Pear and Candied Ginger Clafouti. With its evocative photographs of New England's people and places, and irresistible recipes, The New England Table will have everyone pining for a peaceful breakfast repast at Rangeley Lake, a musical picnic at Tanglewood, or an al fresco dinner in Litchfield County.