Mary Rowlandson was a colonial American woman captured by Native Americans in 1676 and held for 11 weeks before being ransomed. In 1682, six years after her ordeal, The Sovereignty, and Goodness of God: Being a Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson was published. This text is considered a formative American work in the literary genre of captivity narratives. It went through four printings in 1682 and garnered readership both in the New England colonies and in England, leading some to consider it the first American "bestseller.