Upcoming amended and expanded edition.
These key early-American historical documents from the time when Virginia was still an English colony are finally available to the francophone reader. Their author was Richard Frethorne, an indentured English child or youth who was sent or deported to Virginia in the winter of 1622-1623. There, he wrote four letters (three of which to his parents), which were intercepted and later combined with the papers of Nathaniel Rich, a shareholder in the Virginia Company. In them he describes hunger, disease and the frequent raids on the colony by the natives, which were decimating the population of servants, planters and company administrators. The letters express his urgent and ardent desire to be allowed to leave and return to England.
In addition to the translation, this edition contains the English text as collated from the manuscript by Susan Myra Kingsbury, respecting as closely as possible the sometimes-awkward spelling and syntax of the original. The reader will also find in this book an editorial note, comments, and a postface. The latter succinctly recounts, through contemporary documents, the history of the deportations of English children to Virginia by the London Company between 1618 and 1623, as well as the events relating to the famine of 1623.
