Title: Jeremy Belknap: Man of Letters in the Young Republic
Abstract:As author of The History of New Hampshire and founder of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Jeremy Belknap is considered to be one of late eighteenth-century New England's cultural leaders. Althoug...As author of The History of New Hampshire and founder of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Jeremy Belknap is considered to be one of late eighteenth-century New England's cultural leaders. Although scholars have studied some of his achievements in detail,' they have neglected important aspects of his literary career. Students of early American letters have devoted critical attention to his History but have slighted his political allegory, The Foresters, and his twovolume American Biography. Moreover, historians have ignored much of his promotion of American cultural nationalism, including his contribution to early American magazines. The financial difficulties he encountered during the 178os and 1790os as he struggled to publish his writings also merit attention as examples of the obstacles facing aspiring authors in the young Republic. Belknap's interest in prose and poetry dated from his youth. Born in 1744, he studied the classics at Boston's South Grammar School in the 1750s and entered Harvard in 1758. Evidence of his interest in literature appears in his composition books. As a Harvard freshman he published a poem on the taking of Cape Breton, while in his diary he scribbled bits of satirical and serious verse.2 The main work of his youth was An Eclogue Occasioned by the Death of the Reverend Alexander Cumming, A.M. (1763). The poem, inspired by Bel-Read More
Publication Year: 1981
Publication Date: 1981-03-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 3
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