Mercy Otis Warren

by Jeffrey H. Richards

Mercy Otis Warren was a descendant of Mayflower Pilgrims, a witness to the American Revolution, a participant in the debates that gave shape to the new nation. She was a patriot and a passionate believer in democracy. She was the mother of five sons, an equal partner in a marriage of 54 years, a loyal and demanding friend. But given the perspective of time, writes Jeffrey Richards in this exhaustive study of her life and complete work, she was above all a writer, one of the most important of her generation. Both political activist and historian, Warren sought through her writing to influence the course of events in her own time and to record them for posterity. Among the first playwrights - and perhaps the first woman playwright - in America, Warren used her plays as a public forum for unabashed promotion of the Revolutionary cause. In such dramas as The Adulateur, The Defeat, and The Group, she skewered Loyalists to the British crown and elevated the self-sacrificing patriot. Not only