The History and Present State of Virginia

While in London in 1705, Robert Beverley wrote and published The History and Present State of Virginia , one of the earliest printed English-language histories about North America by an author born there. Like his brother-in-law William Byrd II, Beverley was a scion of Virginia’s planter elite, personally ambitious and at odds with royal governors in the colony. As a native-born American — most famously claiming “I am an Indian” — he provided English readers with the first thoroughgoing account