Mercy Otis Warren (1728-1814) was America's first female historian of the American Revolution and the first American woman playwright. The sister of James "the Patriot" Otis, who declared that "taxation without representation is tyranny," she satirized the British and American Loyalists in her popular plays and poems and authored a critique of the U.S. Constitution that was later incorporated into the Bill of Rights.
The mother of five sons and the wife of James Warren, president of the Provincial Congress, Mrs. Warren was also a close friend of Abigail and John Adams. Praised for her "real genius" by her mentor, John Adams, this unprecedented biography reveals their complex relationship -- and why it unraveled. While Mrs. Warren is best remembered for her 1805 History of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution, Nancy Rubin Stuart reveals how her provocative writing made her an exception among the largely voiceless women of the eighteenth century.
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Background Information
The colonists were outraged that the British Parliament, in which they had no voice, would impose taxes on them. Abigail Adams was the wife of John Adams. the nation's second president, and a lifelong letter writer whose letters to her husband have been widely published.