Author, Author: A Short Story of the Rise, reign and ruine of the late Antinomians, Familists, and Libertines (1644) Reappraised

When the great nineteenth-century antiquarian James Savage disputed the assumption that John Winthrop wrote A Short Story (London 1644), he was on to something, although the evidence he adduced was incorrect. Taking as a starting point two facts about the book-it is a compilation of documents and bears numerous marks of being an intentional text-this essay describes how the Short Story came into being and suggests who may be the "I" who mysteriously (and unidentified) speaks in the text.