The Transformation of Virginia, 1740-1790

By Rhys Isaac

With a new preface by the author

492 pp., 6 x 9, 51 illus., 1 map, notes, index

  • Paperback ISBN: 978-0-8078-4814-2
    Published: April 1999
  • E-book EPUB ISBN: 978-0-8078-3860-0
    Published: December 2012
  • E-book PDF ISBN: 979-8-8908-8036-9
    Published: December 2012

Published by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the University of North Carolina Press

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Published by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the University of North Carolina Press

Awards & distinctions

1983 Pulitzer Prize in History

1983 National Historical Society Book Prize

In this Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Rhys Isaac describes and analyzes the dramatic confrontations--primarily religious and political--that transformed Virginia in the second half of the eighteenth century. Making use of the observational techniques of the cultural anthropologist, Isaac vividly recreates and painstakingly dissects a society in the turmoil of profound inner change.

About the Author

Rhys Isaac (1937-2010) was Distinguished Visiting Professor of History at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, and Emeritus Professor of History at LaTrobe University in Australia.
For more information about Rhys Isaac, visit the Author Page.

Reviews

"One of the best--and most provocative--books written on colonial Anglo-America over the past decade, it must be the starting point for all further work on the subject. Equally important, [Isaac's] efforts to demonstrate how historians can profitably employ some of the tools of symbolic anthropologists . . . deserve close inspection."--Times Literary Supplement

"[A] gracefully written evocation of eighteenth-century Virginia culture. . . . The book convinces us that close attention to commonplace events and their settings by someone of Isaac's ability will give us fresh access to long lost worlds."--American Historical Review