Joseph Dennie

Who was Joseph Dennie?

Joseph Dennie (August 30, 1768 – January 7, 1812) was an American author and journalist who was one of the foremost men of letters of the Federalist Era. Timothy Dwight IV once referred to Dennie as "the Addison of America" and "the father of American Belles-Lettres." Dennie was born in Boston, Province of Massachusetts Bay, to Joseph Dennie, a member of a well-to-do merchant family, and his wife Mary Green, whose father was Bartholomew Green, Jr. The Greens were a prominent printing family in colonial America; the progenitor of the family, Samuel Green, emigrated from England with John Winthrop and was one of the first printers in the colonies. Timothy Dwight IV once referred to Dennie as "the Addison of America" and "the father of American Belles-Lettres.

Having moved to Lexington at the age of seven, Dennie returned to Boston in 1783 to study bookkeeping and later clerk in a counting house.

Historical significance

A Federalist, Dennie is best remembered for his series of essays entitled The Lay Preacher and as the founding editor of The Port Folio, a journal espousing classical republican values. Port Folio was the most highly regarded and successful literary publication of its time, and the first important political and literary journal in the United States.