From the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, dramatic accounts of European and American explorers and settlers held captive by pirates, indigenous peoples, and other “uncivilized” groups were published and popularly consumed by Western readers. Often presented as autobiographies, these stories of conflict and hardship—usually concluding with religious redemption—captured the imaginations of generations of colonists. Sometimes of dubious historical credence, these captivity narratives serve more as a valuable witness to Westerners’ conception of their own culture and the construction of “the other” in the collective consciousness.

With nearly 5,000 texts spanning from 1640 to 1800, this library comprises the foundational documents and publications of colonial and revolutionary-era American culture.