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The Maryland History and Culture Bibliography

Kent, Bretton W. Making Dead Oysters Talk. 1988; rev. ed. Crownsville, MD: Maryland Historical Trust, Historic St. Mary's City Commission and Jefferson Patterson Park and Museum, 1992.
Notes: Kent's analyses of oysters from archaeological sites, tell a cautionary tale of overharvest which went unheeded for three centuries.

Kiger, Robert W., Galvin D. R. Bridson, and Donna M. Connelly, eds. Huntia. Vol 7. Pittsburgh: Carnegie Institute of Technology. Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, 1987.
Notes: In this volume contributors James Reveal, George Frick, Melvin Brown and Rose Broome lay out a remarkable history of Maryland (and the Chesapeake's) earliest botanists, their personal stories, their observations and collections, which are still preserved at the British Museum in London. This is technical material, but salted in are the remarkable human stories and insights into a Chesapeake different from today.

Maryland Hall of Records Commission. A Declaration of the Lord Baltemore's Plantation in Mary-land. 1663; reprint, Annapolis, MD: Maryland Hall of Records Commission, Department of General Services, 1983.
Notes: This booklet, issued as part of Maryland's 350th year, includes a facsimile of Lord Baltimore's original description of Maryland's natural resources (plus a remarkable explanation of the Gulf Stream and coastal fisheries!) , and an announcement that the ship "Arke of Mary-land" would sail August 20th, 1633.

Middleton, Arthur Pierce. Tobacco Coast. 1953; reprint, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.
Notes: Middleton, subsequently a retired Episcopal Canon, for years directed work at Colonial Williamsburg. This defining volume on Chesapeake Maritime History contains valuable environmental references coupled to the region's colonial economy.

Miller, Henry M. "Transforming a 'Splendid and Delightsome Land:' Colonists and Ecological Change in the Chesapeake, 1670 - 1820." Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences 76 (September 1986): 173-87.

Sharrer, G. Terry. "The Patuxent: Maryland's Heartland River." Maryland 21 (Spring 1989): 6-23.

Smith, John. The General Historie of Virginia, New England and the Summer Isles. 1624; reprint, Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, 1966.
Notes: Facsimile, also reissued by World Publishing, Cleveland, OH. This volume is as close to reading the original as most of us will get. John Smith was the first environmental observer of Bay and watershed, and his insights are sobering when one contemplates the changes we have wrought.

Tate, Thad W., and David L. Ammerman. The Chesapeake in the Seventeenth Century : Essays on Anglo-American Society. New York: W. W. Norton, 1979.
Notes: These essays, while largely anthropological, tell a lot about how the Bay region was settled, the problems with this process, and how European practices moved across the landscape.

Thorogood, Cyprian. "A Relation of a Voyage Made by Mr. Cyprian Thorogood to the Head of the Baye." The Historian 20 (May 1958).

Vogt, Peter R. "Southern Maryland in Deep Time; A Brief History of our Geology, Part II: The Post-Breakup Sediment Wedge." Bugeye Times 23 (Spring 1998): 1, 6-7.

"300 Years of Printing in Maryland." Historic St. Mary's City Newsletter 7 (Winter 1985/86): 3.

Brown, John E. "Toward the Writing of a New County History." Harford Historical Bulletin 64 (Spring 1995): 55-104.

Fields, Darin E. "George Alsop's Indentured Servant in 'A Character of the Province of Maryland.'" Maryland Historical Magazine 85 (Fall 1990): 221-35.

Hallstead, William F. "Literary Maryland." Maryland 7 (Winter 1974): 15-20.

Krugler, John D., ed. To Live Like Princes: "A Short Treatise Sett Downe in a Letter Written by R.W. to His Worthy Friend C. J. R. Concerning the New Plantation Now Erecting under the Right Ho[nora]ble the Lord Baltimore in Maryland. " Baltimore: Enoch Pratt Free Library, 1976.

Kunesch, Harry Henson. George Alsop's A Character of the Province of Maryland: A Critical Edition. Ph.D. diss., Pennsylvania State University, 1970.
Notes: <em>A Character</em> was originally published in 1666.

Lemay, J. A. Leo. Men of Letters in Colonial Maryland. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1972.
Notes: Lemay focuses on ten literary figures important to the culture of early Maryland. These include 17th-century authors Andrew White, John Hammond and George Alsop; poets Ebenezer Cook and James Sterling; printers William Parks and Jonas Green; and Dr. Alexander Hamilton and the Reverend Thomas Bacon of Tuesday Club fame. Although scholarly in its approach, this is the best overview of the intellectual culture of colonial Maryland.

Michener, James. Chesapeake. New York: Random House, Inc., 1978.
Notes: Historical novel.

Nichols, Capper. "Tobacco and the Rise of Writing in Colonial Maryland." Mississippi Quarterly 50 (Winter 1997): 5-36.

Shivers, Frank R., Jr. Maryland Wits and Baltimore Bards. 1985; reprint, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.
Notes: The definitive introduction to Maryland's intellectual and literary landscape. Although Shivers takes an expansive view of Maryland literature, including some writers whose connections are tenuous, all the important literary figures in Maryland history receive their due. This is an excellent source for discovering many of the less known but important contributors to Maryland's literature.

Baer, Elizabeth. Seventeenth Century Maryland: A Bibliography. Baltimore: John Work Garrett Library, 1949.
Notes: This work supplies not only descriptive cataloging for 209 seventeenth century Maryland books and maps, but also provides insights into the collecting habits of the founder of the Evergreen Collection. Reproductions of title pages are included.

Barquist, Rose, et al. A Source Book for Early Western Maryland History and Genealogy. Shippensburg, PA: Beidel Printing House, 1986.

Brown, Anne W. "The Phoenix: a History of the St. John's College Library." Maryland Historical Magazine 65 (1970): 413-429.

Brown, John E., comp. "Articles from The Harford Historical Bulletin Concerning Harford County History, Arranged According to Historical Periods." Harford Historical Bulletin 56 (Spring 1993): 58-71.

Cox, Richard J. A Guide to the Microfilm Edition of the Calvert Papers. Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 1973.

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