Book excerpt: Excerpt from Bibliography of Charlestown, Massachusetts and Bunker Hill The following pages show results of an effort made by the writer to ascertain the nature of what might be called the literature of his native town, - how the thoughts or affairs of those who have been born or resident in it have found an expression on printed pages. These results have been a surprise, a pleasure, and a satisfaction to him, and he trusts that they will be to others, - a surprise from the number and often the rarity of the works, which it is a pleasure to enumerate; and a satisfaction, joined with this pleasure, that their almost unexceptional characteristic is that of religious faithfulness, of patriotism, of help to charity, to education, or to good citizenship, and that there is so little that the authors would wish to efface. This general estimate, after a review, seems fairly and sufficiently to annote the collection. And this material does not make a merely local story, for it touches wider than local subjects, and also shows to some extent, representatively, what an old New England town - neither obscure nor preeminent - thought, did, witnessed, or produced, and through two and a half centuries has had put on many printed pages. It is not a mere dull list of things nearly passed away and forgotten, but an interesting story of growth from small beginnings to all we now enjoy; and one that illustrates how, on wider sphere and scale, far more widely spread populations have also been growing. It becomes, indeed, to a considerable extent an outline history of the intellectual and material life of the times and of the people. It shows how through much of the Colonial period the chief expression of thought was by the ministry, and religious, with little of the amusing, but something of the imaginative, and more of the historical; how the Revolution associated much writing with a place; how in the earlier period of the nation a wider variety of thought and of addresses was developed; how, for fifty years, the fervid emotions of the Fourth of July Oration were proclaimed, as in many of the greater and minor towns; how changing theological opinions grew; how political and educational and benevolent affairs became more prominent; how the press flourished; how general business enterprise expanded; and how literature increased in scope, and often in value. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.