Alexander and Janet Schaw, Scottish siblings, began a journey in 1774 that would take them from Edinburgh to the Caribbean Islands and then to America. Part of the early wave of Scottish colonization, the pair visited family and friends who had already established themselves in the colonies. Journal of a Lady of Quality is Janet Schaw's account of this voyage through letters to a friend in Scotland. The letters describe the sights, scenery, and social life she encountered, but they also reveal the political atmosphere of an America on the verge of revolution. Stephen Carl Arch provides a new introduction for this Bison Books edition. Charles McLean Andrews (1863-1943) was a professor of American history at Yale University. He and his wife, Evangeline Walker Andrews, also edited Jonathan Dickinson's Journal.

Although much has been written about Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography, other writers of what Stephen Arch calls "self-biographies" in post-revolutionary America have received scant scholarly attention. This rich variety of texts dramatically shows the complex nature of 19th-century concepts of identity. Arguing that "autobiography" is a modern invention, Arch shows its emergence in the older, conservative self-biographies of Alexander Graydon, Benjamin Rush, and Ethan Allen and in the newer, more progressive, and even radical self-biographies of K. White, Elizabeth Fisher, Stephen Burroughs, and John Fitch. Describing the evolution of a concept as elastic as "the self" is not easy, but Arch offers a unique and imaginative study of the emergence of a specifically modern American identity.