Joseph Green (poet)

Joseph Green (1706 – December 11, 1780) was an English Colonial American clergyman and poet who published in 1743, "The Disappointed Cooper", mocking an old man's marriage to a much younger woman as well as criticizing the behavior of some New Light ministers.

Joseph Green
Born1706 (1706)
Boston, Massachusetts
DiedDecember 11, 1780(1780-12-11) (aged 73–74)
London, England
EducationHarvard University
OccupationClergyman, poet
Signature

Biography

Joseph Green was born in Boston in 1706.[1] He graduated from Harvard University in 1726, and became a successful businessman.[2]

He has been called "the foremost wit of his day." He often exchanged parodies and satiric poems with another Boston wit, Mather Byles.[3]

Joseph Green's satirical poetry[4] includes "To Mr. B Occasioned by His Verse" and "To Mr. Smibert on Seeing His Pictures". He also wrote "The Poet's Lamentation for the Loss of his Cat, which he us'd to call his Muse", "On Mr. B—s's singing an Hymn of his own composing", "To the Author of the Poetry in the last Weekly Journal", "A True Impartial Account of the Celebration of the Prince of Orange's Nuptials at Portsmouth", "Inscription under Revd. Jn. Checkley's Picture", "A fig for your learning, I tell you the Town" and "Hail! D––p––t of wondrous fame".

His "Entertainment for a Winter's Evening" is a satire on Boston's first Masonic procession, held in 1749.[3]

Green was one of the members who signed the attestation of veracity regarding Phillis Wheatley's authorship of Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral.[5]

A Tory, he fled America during the American Revolution and was named in the Massachusetts Banishment Act of 1778. He died in London on December 11, 1780.[2] In his will, he left 100 pounds to his slave, Plato.[6]

References
  1. "Specimens of American Poetry, Samuel Kettell". Referenced July 9, 2011
  2. The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography. VIII. James T. White & Company. 1924. p. 451. Retrieved January 27, 2021 – via Google Books.
  3. Gates, Henry Louis Jr. (2003). The Trials of Phillis Wheatley: America's First Black Poet and Her Encounters With the Founding Fathers, New York: Basic Civitas Books. ISBN 978-0-465-01850-5, p. 10
  4. http://www.bookrags.com/biography/joseph-green-dlb/
  5. "American Poetry: The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries". Referenced May 17, 2010
  6. Gates, Henry Louis Jr. (2003). The Trials of Phillis Wheatley: America's First Black Poet and Her Encounters With the Founding Fathers, New York: Basic Civitas Books. ISBN 978-0-465-01850-5, p. 12


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