Benjamin Tompson, Colonial Bard

The first complete and reliable edition of a poet ranked among the best in 17th-century New England, this book presents Benjamin Tompson (1642–1714) as a proud, sensitive, and humorous writer who applauded leadership and heroism while admonishing the foolish, the worldly, and the dissident. A Harvard graduate and schoolmaster (Cotton Mather was his pupil) Benjamin Tompson celebrate the "New Canaan" in occasional, elegiac, and satirical poems which represent, to one critic, a transition between "colonial baroque and colonial neoclassic art." New-Englands Crisis, describing the 1675–76 war against the Algonquins (in which the poet did first-aid duty), is a unique combination of classical epic and almost journalistic realism. It is also a witty satire, deflating the pretensions of the new generation of Puritan and Indian leaders. "The Grammarians Funeral," though packed with puns and word games, does not deprecate linguistic precision. In general, this colonial bard looked backward to lost traditions and forward to unrealized potentials.

Approved by the Center for Scholarly Editions, Professor White's edition presents thirty poems, three letters, and a Latin oration, all annotated with historical and literary information.