Francis Daniel Pastorius Reader

The Francis Daniel Pastorius Reader is Penn State University Press.  It has been works for a lot of years—for years.

Francis Daniel Pastorius was one of the first German settlers to Pennsylvania, every late seventeenth and the early eighteenth century.  This monumental anthology presents a selection of his many writings in one volume.

Pastorius sailed to North America as a Pietist but found a unique home among the Quakers in Pennsylvania. Within this early modern religious context, he was a lawyer, educator, and community leader; a polymath; and a prolific writer and collector of knowledge. At the turn of the eighteenth century, Pastorius held one of the largest manuscript collections in North American. His collecting, curation, and dissemination represents a unique look at the ways information was stored, processed, and utilized during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in both North America and Europe. This rich selection of Pastorius’ writings on religion, education, gardening, law and community, and the colony of Pennsylvania—as well as letters, poems, and numerous encyclopedic and bibliographic works—shows the work of a true humanist in action.

Pastorius’s works have long been important to archival study of early German settlement and the Atlantic world. Now available together, transcribed, translated, and annotated, his writings will have widespread significance to the study of early American literature and history.

 

Comments

[Howard E. Katz]

Congrats on the book. There is a Franz Pastorius Boulevard in downtown Cleveland. The street sign says "Father of German Immigration to Colonial America" and has an image of a small German flag. Not enough space on the sign to mention his many other accomplishments, including his early anti-slavery advocacy.

[Al Brophy]

Interesting.