Hartford Wits Summary

In the essay below, Marble surveys the major figures and literary output of the Connecticut Wits. Classification is a common substitute for literary criticism. Often a relative convenience, it has ... Read more

Lowance is an American critic and educator who has written extensively on early American literature. In the following excerpt, he discusses how Barlow adapted the traditional language of religious mil... Read more

The editor of Comparative Literature Studies, Aldridge is an American educator and author. Among his works on the eighteenth century are Benjamin Franklin and His French Contemporaries (1957) and Man ... Read more

Here, Camfield explores Barlow's understanding of Enlightenment and humanistic concepts as mirrored in several of his works. If, as Emory Elliott suggests [in Revolutionary Writers, 1982], c... Read more

Parrington was an American historian, critic, and educator who contributed regularly to such prestigious reference works as Encyclopaedia Britannica and The Cambridge History of American Literature. H... Read more

Franklin is an American educator, editor, and critic. Below, he comments on the breadth and variety of prose pieces composed by the major and minor Connecticut Wits. It is the custom for each new a... Read more

In the following excerpt from his preface to his 1861 edition of The Anarchiad, Riggs comments on its historical context and significance. In presenting The Anarchiad to the public, now for the fir... Read more

In the excerpt below, Otis considers Trumbull's M'Fingal and Barlow's Columbiad as two of the most important literary productions of the Connecticut Wits. The most popular and ... Read more