JAMES KIRKE PAULDING (2 August 1778-6 April 1860), who was born in Great Nine Partners, Putnam County, New York, and died in Hyde Park, New York, is remembered today for his collaboration with Washington Irving on Salmagundi and for his patriotic defense of American character and institutions against the abusive attacks of the British in the early years of the nineteenth century. His staunch Americanism permeated the wide variety of literary modes he used--verse satires, parodies, allegories, dramas, novels, tales, familiar essays, reviews, and travel accounts. Born during the Revolutionary War in an area troubled by British depredation and harassment, Paulding as a boy acquired a dislike of the English which is revealed in most of his writings, even though he often borrowed literary models and approaches from them to express his views.

A bookish person with little formal education, Paulding amused himself at first by writing undistinguished lyrics in...