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Early Modern (1450 CE - 1800 CE)

Title page of The Ancient History of the Maori
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The Ancient History of the Maori

In this excerpt, an adult Horeta Te Taniwha recounts childhood memories of a cultural encounter with Europeans for a Pakeha researcher.

Title page of Charlotte Temple: A Tale of Truth
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Charlotte Temple: A Tale of Truth

Charlotte Temple: A Tale of Truth, published in 1791, was the first American bestseller. The author, Susanna Haswell Rowson, was born in England circa 1762, and died in 1824 in Massachusetts, where she spent most of her life.

Title page of A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison
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A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison

In 1753, 15 year old Mary Jemison was captured by Indians along the Pennsylvania frontier during the Seven Years' War between the French, English, and Indian peoples of North America.

Title page of Noticias de Portugal
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Noticias de Portugal

Suggestion for handling orphans, devised in 1655 by Manoel Severim de Faria, an official for the bishop of Evora in Portugal. Here Severim de Faria speaks about the role orphaned children could and should play in the Portuguese empire.

Book of Children by Thomas Phaer
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Boke of Chyldren by Thomas Phaer

Phaer was a lawyer and a physician who wrote the first work in English devoted solely to the health of children. It was first published in 1544 and went through many editions. The audience for the book according to Phaer was everyone who cared about children.

Title page of Observationes Medicae
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"On Scarlet Fever"

There are many fevers listed as the cause of death in early modern England that do not translate well into modern diseases (worm, spotted, pining, nervous) but scarlet fever is still with us. The Puritan Dr.

Title page of Letters of the Right Honourable Lady
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Lady Mary Wortley Montagu on Small Pox in Turkey

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762) was the wife of the British Ambassador to Turkey. In 1715 she had survived but been terribly scarred by smallpox while her brother had died from the disease.

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The Taoist Priest of Lao-Shan

"The Taoist Priest of Lao-Shan" is a folktale with a moral lesson. The tale uses religion as a device to instill in children the traits desired by upstanding citizens within the culture at that time.

Title page from The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano
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Excerpts from The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano

One of the very first slave narratives, The Interesting Narrative of Olaudah Equiano (1745-1797), served as a prototype for the well-known slave autobiographies of the 19th century written by such fugitive slaves as Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs.

Title page for The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano
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The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano: Kidnapping

From the 16th to the 18th centuries, an estimated 20 million Africans crossed the Atlantic to the Americas in the trans-Atlantic slave trade.