Richard Frohock

author of Buccaneers and Privateers: The Story of the English Sea Rover, 1675-1725

February 4, 2013

Richard Frohock grew up in Grand Junction, Colo. and attended Colorado College for his undergraduate degree. After completing his graduate work at The University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1996, he joined the English department at Oklahoma State University, where he teaches courses in early American literature and 18th-century transatlantic studies. He is the author of Heroes of Empire: The British Colonial Protagonist in America, 1596-1764 (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2004), and numerous articles on British depictions of the Americas in the 17th and 18th centuries. He lives in Stillwater, Okla., with his wife and two children.

Between the years 1665-1725, narratives of sea voyages to the Americas proliferated in London. Although scholars have written many biographies of prominent seafarers and have closely studied the history of particular voyages, surprisingly little work has been done on the critical questions this body of narratives raises about law, authority and the rhetoric of empire. Buccaneers and Privateers delineates ways these voyage narratives contributed to a larger cultural preoccupation with rationalizing English acquisition in the Americas, particularly in the Caribbean and the along the coastlines of Central and South America.

URL: https://library.okstate.edu/news/celebratingbooks/2013-honorees/richard-frohock

Last Updated: 12 January 2022