Albion’s Seed (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: David Hackett Fischer
- First Published: 1989
- Type of Work: Cultural history
- Time of Work: Primarily 1600-1776
- Setting: The American Colonies and Great Britain
- Principal Characters: John Winthrop, John Cotton, Sir William Berkeley, William Penn, Andrew Jackson
- Genres: Nonfiction, History
- Subjects: Culture, New England, Domestic violence, Native Americans or American Indians, Immigration or emigration, England or English people, American Revolution, Folk music or folk songs, Scotland or Scottish people, Puritans or Puritanism, Wales or Welsh people, Society of Friends or Quakers
- Locales: Great Britain, American colonies
Albion is an ancient name for the island of Britain, Celtic or possibly pre-Celtic in origin. In Albions’ Seed: Four British Folkways in America, David Hackett Fischer argues that the origins of American culture are not to be found in either the frontier or ethnic pluralism. Rather, Fischer locates them in four patterns of folkways brought from Great Britain and established in the British Colonies by successive waves of immigrants before 1776. Although less than 20 percent of Americans today are of British stock, Fischer contends that British folkways nevertheless retain much...
[The entire page is 2082 words long]
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