Joel Barlow

Biography

Joel Barlow (1754–1812) was an American poet, diplomat, and political writer who was one of the “Connecticut Wits,” a group of Yale-educated writers who sought to create a distinctly American literature in the aftermath of the Revolution. Born in Redding, Connecticut, Barlow served as a chaplain during the Revolutionary War before pursuing a literary and political career. He spent extended periods in Europe, where he became sympathetic to the French Revolution and wrote political pamphlets advocating democratic republicanism. His ambitions were epic: The Columbiad (1807), a revised and expanded version of his earlier Vision of Columbus, was an attempt to write the American national epic, tracing the history and destiny of the New World from Columbus to the young republic. Though The Columbiad was ultimately judged too ponderous for literary immortality, Barlow’s shorter mock-epic poem “The Hasty Pudding” is a beloved classic of early American verse. Barlow died during a diplomatic mission to Napoleon in 1812.