“No man is an island, entire of itself,” wrote John Donne, who briefly hankered after the job of secretary of the Jamestown colony. And no writers are either. We leaned heavily on several people throughout the writing of this book.
First comes Henry Jupiter Butman, who worked closely with us over a three-year period, from the development of the publishing proposal through to the submission of the manuscript. He has acted as thought partner, collaborator, and researcher: digging out great sources, drafting copious and compelling research notes, and providing extremely valuable commentary on the entire manuscript. Also, Henry set up and managed the Evernote database of notes and sources, developed an interactive timeline, and mastered the intricacies of the Calendar of State Papers online resource. Henry, thank you: we really couldn’t have done this without you.
We would also like to thank John T. “Ike” Williams and Katherine Flynn of the Kneerim & Williams Literary Agency in Boston. Right from the beginning, they have been staunch supporters, encouraging us and guiding us through to publication. Both have a special feeling for historical material, and this period in particular, and contributed their knowledge and analysis of the content, in addition to their professional expertise. John also thanks his colleague, John De Lancey, who conducted valuable research.
We were honored and happy to find a home for the book with Little, Brown. This was entirely down to our editor, Vanessa Mobley. She came in late to the placement process but showed such passion for the topic that she and Little, Brown were the obvious choice. The fact that Little, Brown was the first trade publisher of William Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation in 1856—which we only realized later—has given us the feeling that our collaboration was written in the stars. Throughout the writing process, Vanessa has proffered wise counsel and her boundless enthusiasm has propelled us forward.
We have also been blessed to have received the support of Little, Brown publisher, Reagan Arthur, and the contributions of editorial assistant Joseph Lee, production editor Michael Noon, publicist Elizabeth Garriga, marketing manager Lauren Velasquez, copyeditor David Coen, and cartographer Jeffrey Ward.
During the writing of New World Inc., we have been constantly aware of the debt we owe the scholars who have done much of the heavy lifting of research in this period, creating a host of essential collections of original manuscripts, monographs, articles, and papers. We hope our extensive bibliography pays tribute to their work. Some of the sources are only accessible in libraries, and we consulted the physical collections at the British Library, Boston Public Library, Boston Athenaeum, Cambridge University Library, London Library, and the National Archives at Kew. But we have been almost ineffably facilitated by online resources—such as the British History Online database (which includes the Calendar of State Papers) and the JSTOR database of articles—and by online tools, such as Evernote, which facilitates the storage, organization, search, and access of huge quantities of information in many forms.
Continuing the digital theme, we would also like to recognize the role played by Skype. This book is an Anglo-American collaboration that would have been difficult, not to say impossible, to accomplish without the face-to-face conversations that we conducted over Skype on a weekly basis over a period of two years.
Above all, we would like to pay tribute to our families for their encouragement, tolerance, understanding, advice, forebearance, interest, and love during the all-consuming process of creating this book. John wishes to thank his family, Nancy, Jeremy, and Henry, for their contributions and support and expresses his deep appreciation to his father, Robert, who instilled in him a fascination with exploration, but did not live to see the publication of this book. Simon would like to thank his parents, Val and Pete, who are no longer here, but who were always there for him when they were, and who fostered his passion for the past. To his family, Alison, Ella, and Martha, who listened enthusiastically to the latest reports from yesteryear and who were never short of constructive criticism, he would like to say the biggest thank-you of all.