SOURCE: An introduction to The Poetry of the Minor Connecticut Wits, edited by Benjamin Franklin V, Scholars' Facsimiles & Reprints, 1970, pp. xi-xxii.

In the following excerpt from a 1967 introduction, Franklin presents a brief overview of the poetry of the lesser-known Connecticut Wits.

John Trumbull, Timothy Dwight, David Humphreys, and Joel Barlow dominated the American literary scene in the last two decades of the eighteenth and the first decade of the nineteenth century. These poets, all born between 1750 and 1754 and all graduates of Yale College, wrote poetry that for the most part praised the history and the society of our new nation. All but Barlow were politically, socially,

and religiously conservative and were the first Americans to speak out against the freethinking and, as they saw them, ignorant masses. Contemporary to and...