Review: Silverman, The Life and Times of Cotton Mather (1984)

[truepenny]

The Life and Times of Cotton Mather by Kenneth Silverman

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This is a very even-handed biography of a very difficult subject. Cotton Mather was such a jumble of things, good and bad, that it's hard to sort them out into any kind of assessment. Silverman does a great job, both with that and with exploring the political/religious/cultural changes in Massachusetts during Mather's lifetime. He uses Mather's diaries wherever possible, his letters and sermons and books for the gaps where the diaries are missing. He's very honest about Mather's failings (he invents the term "Matherese" for Mather's particular habit of deprecating himself on one hand and bragging on the other, generally in the same sentence), but also points out his extraordinary accomplishments---including the championing of smallpox inoculations in 1721---and I ended up feeling like I know Cotton Mather as well as anyone can from three centuries away.



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