Miller, Perry (Gilbert Eddy) (1905–1963)

US literary historian and educator. He pioneered the serious historical study of colonial literature and theology in his most influential work, The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (1939), reinterpreting the Puritans through the lens of intellectual history. His studies of Jonathan Edwards (1949), and Roger Williams (1953), among other published works, established Miller as a preeminent US intellectual historian. Miller was born in Chicago, Illinois. He was educated at the University of Chicago and taught American history at Harvard University (1931–63), with time out to serve in World War II.