Abram C. Van Engen. Sympathetic Puritans

It is fair to say that twenty-first-century scholars of the literary and cultural history of early New England Puritanism might think their book will be the last word on the subject. Why? It is mainly because the wise shifting of attention away from the tiny strand between Boston and Cambridge as a point of origin for American Studies has meant a ratcheting back on monographs covering the area. But then a pithy volume such as Matt Cohen’s The Networked Wilderness (2009) comes along or a provocative reconsideration such as Sarah Rivett’s The Science of the Soul in Colonial New England (2011) enters the field and you realize there is much more to say. Such is one context for Abram C. Van Engen’s brilliant work Sympathetic Puritans: Calvinist Fellow Feeling in Early New England. But to praise a thesis that breaks new ground—which his does—is to miss the many other pleasures and insights this elegant book provides.

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