Cotton Mather (February 12, 1663 – February 13, 1728). A.B. 1678 (Harvard College), A.M. 1681; honorary doctorate 1710 (University of Glasgow), was a socially and politically influential Puritan minister, prolific author, and pamphleteer. Cotton Mather was the son of influential minister Increase Mather. He is often remembered for his connection to the Salem witch trials.

Major works

Christopher D. Felker, Reinventing Cotton Mather in the American Renaissance: Magnalia Christi Americana in Hawthorne, Stowe, and Stoddard (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1993), ISBN 1-55553-187-3
Richard F. Lovelace, The American Pietism of Cotton Mather: Origins of American Evangelicalism, (Grand Rapids, Mich.: American University Press, 1979), ISBN 0-8028-1750-5
Robert Middlekauff, The Mathers: Three Generations of Puritan Intellectuals, 1596-1728, ISBN 0-520-21930-9
Kenneth Silverman, The Life and Times of Cotton Mather, ISBN 1-56649-206-8
Reiner Smolinski, The Threefold Paradise of Cotton Mather, ISBN 0-8203-1519-2