For primary source material, The Letters of Sir Walter Ralegh, edited by the late Agnes M. C. Latham with Joyce A. Youings (Exeter, UK: University of Exeter Press, 1999), replaces the 1868 edition of Raleigh’s letters edited by Edward Edwards. The new edition contains every one of the known extant letters, some 240 in all. (Edwards’ edition contained 160 letters.) The letters are all full text with original spelling but with modern punctuation. The volume also has a Foreword by David Beers Quinn.

A second work, Michael Oberg’s Dominion and Civility: English Imperialism and Native America, 1585-1685 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999), explores the interaction between English colonization attempts and Native American cultures in a transatlantic context. Using an ethnohistorical approach, Oberg discusses how colonial goals formulated in England—profit for sponsors, safety from both Native American and European enemies, and “civilizing” Native Americans—turned out to be impossible in light of Native American cultural responses to the English. As the title implies, Oberg begins his exploration with a discussion of these issues as they apply to the Roanoke colonization efforts of the 1580s.

Oberg also published an article, “Gods and Men: The Meeting of Indian and White Worlds on the Carolina Outer Banks, 1584-1586,” in the North Carolina Historical Review (76 [1999]: 367-90). In “Gods and Men,” Oberg argues that the interaction of English and Algonquian religious beliefs during the period of the Roanoke voyages produced various reactions, particularly from the Algonquians, that lasted past the time of contact. Some of the Algonquians sought ways to accommodate the English while others rejected the settlers, even leaving Roanoke Island and, in so doing, contributing to the failure of the colonization efforts.

Another book that includes a chapter discussing Roanoke colonization-related materials is Thomas Scanlan’s Colonial Writing and the New World, 1583-1671: Allegories of Desire (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Scanlan’s Chapter 2, “Fear and Love: Two Versions of Protestant Ambivalence,” discusses Jean de Léry’s History of a Voyage to Brazil (1578) and Thomas Hariot’s A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (1588) as individual works and as they were published by Theodore de Bry in the 1590s accompanied by de Bry’s engravings. Scanlan argues that these and other works used descriptions of colonial projects to create a sense of nationhood for England. In particular, Hariot’s work describing Roanoke Island and its environs—including the Native American population of the region—as accompanied by de Bry’s engravings based on John White’s watercolors of the same subjects, creates an image of a Protestant England that could be embodied in the project of colonization.

Margaret Supplee Smith and Emily Herring Wilson’s North Carolina Women: Making History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999) has several sections with connections to the Roanoke colonization efforts. These include, in Chapter One, “The First Settlers of This Land: Native American Women,” the sections “Native Americans and European Contact” and “The Impact of European Contact on the Status of Native American Women,” though the entire chapter has much to say about the Algonquian women of eastern North Carolina; in Chapter Two, “The Most Industrious Sex in That Place: Women on the Carolina Frontier, 1587-1729,” the opening section entitled “Roanoke Voyages, 1584-1587”; and later in the book, an entire section devoted to Sallie Southall Cotten, who did a good deal of work promoting knowledge of Virginia Dare and the Roanoke colonization efforts, including writing the narrative poem The White Doe (1901).

Another set of recently published Roanoke-related articles, ones in the new American National Biography from Oxford University Press, are discussed in a separate article in this issue (see page 6).

Two more popularly written works include sections with Roanoke colonization connections as well. David Cecelski has collected several of his essays for the magazine Coastwatch, published by the University of North Carolina Sea Grant at North Carolina State University, in a book titled A Historians’ Coast: Adventures into the Tidewater Past (Winston-Salem, NC: John F. Blair, 2000). The first chapter, “The Smoke and Ashes of Croatan,” describes Cecelski’s experiences spending time with David Phelps and his crew at the Croatan archaeological dig in Buxton, North Carolina.

Jean Day’s Carolina Indians (Newport, NC: Golden Age Press, 1998) tells the story of Native Americans in North Carolina and their contact with Europeans and European Americans, from the pre-Columbian myth of Prince Madoc to the present day. In her section “Natives Meet the English,” Day tells in a popular voice the story of the Roanoke voyages’ encounters with Native Americans, including imagined conversations and musings of individuals.

As part of the 1999 celebration of the town of Manteo’s centennial, Angel Ellis Khoury gathered pictures and put together Manteo: A Roanoke Island Town (Virginia Beach, VA: Donning, 2000). The book includes both significant texts describing Manteo’s history as well as many, many photographs from the past 100 years. Six of the books’ 20 chapters have particular links to Roanoke-colonization: “Preserving a National Historic Site: Fort Raleigh,” “From Oberammergau to Manteo: ‘The Lost Colony,’” “History Transplanted: The Elizabethan Gardens,” “From Bideford to Manteo and Back: America’s 400th Anniversary,” “Manteo’s Floating Ambassador: The ‘Elizabeth II’ Sets Sail,” and “Hands-On History and the Lively Arts: Roanoke Island Festival Park.”

One work with only passing references to Roanoke colonization but of interest to anyone examining subjects about eastern North Carolina is Douglas Milton Orr and Alfred W. Stuart’s The North Carolina Atlas: Portrait for a New Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000). An update of North Carolina Atlas: Portrait of a Changing Southern State (1975), by James W. Clay along with Orr and Stuart, also published by the University of North Carolina Press, the new version contains chapters on “The Natural Environment,” “History,” and “Cultural Arts and Historic Preservation,” among many other topics.

Finally, while not new, John Alexander and James D. Lazell’s Ribbon of Sand: The Amazing Convergence of the Ocean and the Outer Banks (originally published in 1992 by Algonquin Books) has been reissued with a new preface by the University of North Carolina Press. On and off throughout their work, Alexander and Lazell connect their discussion of the shifting sand, land, water, and natural environment of the Outer Banks and Roanoke Island to the Roanoke voyages.

While there are several studies specifically about Roanoke colonization-related subjects in preparation, the most recent studies illustrate how much the arrival of the English in the 1580s and their encounters with the people and the geography of the region are interconnected with other topics of study.