Hobomok: A Tale of Early Times

A new edition of Lydia Maria Child’s 1824 novel exploring Indigenous–settler relations in the early days of colonial New England, which launched her long career as a writer and activist.

Hobomok, a Tale of Early Times launched the career of one of nineteenth-century America’s most influential writers and activists. Set during the first years of Puritan settlement, Lydia Maria Child’s debut novel centers the experiences of women under the strain of transatlantic migration, dramatizes the religious disputes that roiled the early colonies, and mythologizes settler-Indigenous relations—especially with its depiction of a marriage between its Wampanoag title character and the fictional English colonist Mary Conant, a plotline that astonished readers in 1824. Today, Hobomok commands interest both as a crucial contribution to the project of national mythmaking in early nineteenth-century American literature, and as the first work by a major but still often underappreciated nineteenth-century woman writer. This first new edition of Hobomok in nearly four decades includes an annotated text, a robust introduction to Child and her novel, and a rich array of contextual materials.