Popular in his own era, Joseph C. Neal was quickly forgotten after his death. Given Neal's limited canon and the unobtrusiveness of his brief life in Philadelphia as newspaper editor and urban comedian, it is understandable how later anthologists could so easily confuse his work with that of John Neal, the Yankee humorist. As well as Neal expressed his bemusement at the petty vanities of city life, the world has passed him by.

Joseph Clay Neal was born to the Reverend James A. Neal and Christiana Palmer Neal on 3 February 1807 in Greenland, New Hampshire. James Neal had moved with his pregnant wife from Philadelphia to Greenland because of his failing health, leaving his position as principal of "one of the first female academies of celebrity" in the United States in order to become minister of a Congregational church. When her husband died two years later, Christiana Neal returned...