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CW Journal : Winter 2007 : George Percy's Jamestown Diary


George Percy's A Trewe Relacyon

 Sir George Percy.

Sir George Percy.

Jamestown colonist George Percy’s A Trewe Relaycon, presented here in Mark Nicholls’ new transcription, is, as Nicholls says, “a relentless catalog of woe and misery.” Percy composed it in 1625, thirteen years after returning to England, apparently referring a now-lost diary. In part a defense of Percy’s presidency during the 1609-10 Starving Time, the manuscript remained among his family’s private papers for more than three centuries, and not printed until 1922. Nicholls worked from the only original copy, now in the Elkins Collection of the Free Library of Philadelphia.

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