Author Description

FEDERALIST LITERATI Complete Texts of: The Charms of Fancy (1788) by Richard Alsop, The Lay Preacher (1796, and 1817 posthumous compilation) by Joseph Dennie, The Powers of Genius (1800), with additional brief poems by John Blair Linn and STAGE WORKS: "The Father" (1789) and "The Archers" (1796) by William Dunlap,"Edwin and Angelina" (1797) by Elihu Hubbard Smith ~Plus "A Sketch of the Life and Character of John Blair Linn" (1805) by Charles Brockden Brown. *** By "Federal Literati," and broadly, is meant: literary artists of the Federal period 1789-1801.While among them there is a pronounced leaning, say, more toward Washington rather than Thomas Paine (and then somewhat by default Thomas Jefferson), except for Joseph Dennie (and Alsop later on in his career), none of the authors chosen for this anthology was actively political in their writings. Elihu Hubbard Smith, for instance, in a letter to Sally Pierce (25 Dec. 1796, see Diary, Cronin ed., p. 277) states: "A Federalist, & a Democrat in the party-acceptation of those terms, are equally detestable." So that, again speaking generally and by comparison, they saw education, culture, and or religion (note particularly the pro-church Dennie and Blair [Brockden Brown's brother-in-law] amidst the enlightenment deists) as preferred social and national solutions over, though not necessarily at the exclusion of, contemporary party politics; which last aspired or pretended to ideals, but (as far as the "Literati" were inclined) were all too human and necessarily utilitarians of the moment in practice. LIBRARY OF EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE #22