June 15-16, 2024: Ocean State Histories: Further Reading

[250 years ago this week, Rhode Island banned the slave trade. That significant moment was just one of many in this littlest state’s story, so this week I’ve AmericanStudied a handful of Ocean State histories, leading up to this special post on works through which you can learn more about Rhode Island!]

On five works that should be on any Little Rhodey reading list.

1)      William McLoughlin, Rhode Island: A Bicentennial History (1978): From what I can tell, there isn’t a more recent book-length history of the colony and state, and certainly not one as comprehensive as McLoughlin’s.

2)      John Barry, Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty (2012): I hope this week’s series has made clear how much more there is to Rhode Island than just Roger Williams—but there’s no way to tell the story of the Ocean State that doesn’t include its founder in a prominent role. Of the many bios and analyses, Barry’s seems particularly interesting in its sense of what it would mean to likewise see Williams as an American origin point.

3)      S.T. Joshi, I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H.P. Lovecraft (2013): Weird Tale expert Joshi published a one-volume bio of Providence’s own Lovecraft in 1996, but apparently it was significantly cut from his original manuscript; this two-volume edition captures the full scope of Joshi’s biography of the complex, dark in every sense, foundational speculative author who is unquestionably Rhode Island’s most famous literary legacy.

4)      Christy Clark-Pujara, Dark Work: The Business of Slavery in Rhode Island (2016): I’ve written multiple times in this space, including in Monday’s post on Roger Williams, about Wendy Warren’s New England Bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America (2016). Perhaps Warren’s scope is broader than Clark-Pujara’s project (published in the same year), but that just means they complement each other, with Clark-Pujara able to dive far more deeply into the histories and legacies of slavery in Rhode Island.

5)      Sowams Heritage Area website (2017+): Scholarly and historical writing no longer happen only in hard-copy publications, of course (and duh, since you’re reading this blog). After I wrote this July 4^th column on Bristol in 2022, I was contacted by Dave Weed, the historian who runs the Sowams Heritage Area website and publishes its blog, newsletter, and other layers to this important local history work. I’ve learned a lot from Weed and the site, and would recommend them to anyone interested in Rhode Island histories and stories—which, as I hope this week has made clear, are all of ours.

Next series starts Monday,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Other Ocean State texts or histories you’d highlight?