Joseph Brown Ladd is noteworthy chiefly as a transitional figure. As eighteenth-century classicism withered and the preromantic movement blossomed in Europe, Ladd was receptive to the new trends. With Philip Freneau and Timothy Dwight, he was one of the earliest American writers to be influenced by the English preromantic poets. His popularity in his own time attests to the changing tastes of the American public.

Born the eldest son of Sarah Gardner Ladd and William Ladd, a man of modest means who served as a soldier in the Revolutionary War and as a member of the Rhode Island legislature, Joseph received little formal schooling, but he precociously educated himself with the available books. At ten years of age he had his first poem, "Invocation to the Almighty," published in the Newport Mercury. His continuing fascination with books led his father to apprentice him in a printing office in...