A Select Bibliography
If you would like to read further about some of the subjects in The Orphanmaster, these books would make a good start. I’ve included my own book, The Women of the House, not to be self serving (well, maybe a little) but because The Orphanmaster grew directly out of some of the research I did for that book.
The Era and the Colony
[Stokes in his Icongraphy has all the documents one could wish for, rife with period details that I used whole cloth, such as the African giant who broke the double noose in which they were attempting to hang him. The Schama, also, is essential.]
Abbott, John S. C.. Peter Stuyvesant: The Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam. New York: Dodd & Mead, 1873.
Goodfriend, Joyce D.. Before the Melting Pot: Society and Culture in Colonial New York City, 1664-1730. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992.
Irving, Washington. Knickerbocker’s History of New York;. New York: F. Ungar Pub. Co., 1959.
Jacobs, Jaap. The Colony of New Netherland: A Dutch Settlement in Seventeenth-Century America. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2009.
Schama, Simon. The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age. New York: Knopf : 1987.
Singleton, Esther. Dutch New York. New York: B. Blom, 1968.
Stokes, I. N. Phelps. The Iconography of Manhattan Island. New York: R.H. Dodd, 1915-1928.
Zee, Henri A., and Barbara Zee. A Sweet and Alien Land: The Story of Dutch New York. New York: Viking Press, 1978.
Alice Morse Earle
[Somewhat out of fashion today, Alice Morse Earle still rings true for her wealth of odd detail and focus on domestic life. Just don’t take her for Gospel truth!]
Earle, Alice Morse. Costume of Colonial Times,. New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1894.
Earle, Alice Morse. Home life in Colonial days. New York: Macmillan Co. ;, 1898.
Earle, Alice Morse. Colonial Days in Old New York. Detroit: Singing Tree Press, 1968.
Earle, Alice Morse. Curious Punishments of Bygone Days. Detroit: Singing Tree Press, 1968.
History of Albany
Merwick, Donna. Possessing Albany, 1630-1710: The Dutch and English Experiences. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Venema, Janny. Beverwijck: a Dutch village on the American frontier, 1652-1664. Hilversum, the Netherlands: Verloren, 2003.
Women’s Experience
Van Rensselaer, Mrs. John King. The Goode Vrouw of Mana-ha-ta at Home and In Society: 1609-1760. New York: Charles Scribner Sons, 1898.
Zimmerman, Jean. The Women of the House: How a Colonial She-Merchant Built a Mansion, a Fortune, and a Dynasty. Orlando: Harcourt, Inc., 2006.
Personal Narratives
[Here is the real period stuff, filtered only through the prejudices of the authors.]
Danckaerts, Jasper, Peter Sluyter, and Henry Cruse Murphy. Journal of a Voyage to New York. Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, 1966.
Donck, Adriaen van der, and Jeremiah Johnson. A Description of the New Netherlands. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1968.
Jameson, J. Franklin. Narratives of New Netherlands: 1609-1664. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1967.
Knight, Sarah Kemble. The Journal of Madame Knight. Chester, CT: Applewood Books: 1992.
English History
[Historical novelists have been dining out on Charles II for years.]
Fraser, Antonia. King Charles II. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1979.
Uglow, Jennifer S. A Gambling Man: Charles II’s Restoration Game. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009.
Foodways of the Dutch
[Doughnuts? Yes. But so much more. I’ve made a few of the dishes myself, and they are gut-busting but delicious.]
Perl, Lila, and Richard Cuffari. Slumps, Grunts, and Snickerdoodles: What Colonial America Ate and Why. New York: Seabury Press, 1975.
Rose, Peter G.. The Sensible Cook: Dutch Foodways in the Old and the New World. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1989.
Spinoza
Spinoza, Benedictus de, and E. M. Curley. A Spinoza Reader: The Ethics and Other Works. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994.
Stewart, Matthew. The Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World. New York: Norton, 2006.
The Witika and the Native American Experience
Blackwood, Algernon. The Wendigo. Doylestown, Pa.: Wildside Press, 2002.
Dennis, Matthew. Seneca Possessed: Indians, Witchcraft, and Power in the Early American Republic. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010.
Leland, Charles Godfrey. The Algonquin Legends of New England: Myths and Folk lore of the Micmac, Passamaquoddy, Penobscot tribe,. Detroit: Singing Tree Press, 1968/1884.
Parmenter, Jon. The Edge of the Woods: Iroquoia, 1534-1701. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2010.