It is a hard fact, but no history of a colonial town like Hudson's HISTORY OF SUDBURY will ever be written again. In our mobile society few build up the pride of locality and form their individual identity within the environment of a particular town. Such a work would be commercially unprofitable in even the largest community. A publication of the size and limited distribution of Hudson's book would today have to sell for seventy-five dollars a copy and even then the author would receive only five thousand dollars for two years of hard work. This book is reprinted because Sudbury is unique in its formation and in what its history reveals. Its historical records are more complete and more extensive in scope than those of any other town. As the second town formed in Massachusetts "beyond the flow of the tides," it has a unique heritage as a puritan village on the edge of the wilderness. After Salem, Sudbury was the largest town in Massachusetts during colonial times. Even during the Revolution it was the largest town in Middlesex County. In his brilliant and perceptive study PURITAN VILLAGE, Sumner Clinton Powell points to Sudbury as a "remarkable experiment in the formation and growth of a social community.