Biography Joel Barlow

Joel Barlow

photo of Joel Barlow
  • Time Period1754 - 1812
  • Place
  • CountryUnited States

Poet Biography

Joel Barlow was born March 24, 1754, Redding, Connecticut.
Barlow was an American diplomat and poet,
he is most remembered as one of the Connecticut wits
and the author of the mock The Hasty Pudding (1793).

He briefly attended Dartmouth College but then transferred to Yale, where he celebrated his graduation from Yale writing
Poem on the Prospect of Peace (1778).

He also briefly served in the Connecticut Militia in 1776.

Almost ten years after graduating from Yale he accomplished many tasks such as schoolteaching, further service in the Army as a chaplain, and his graduate studies. he also was creating a newspaper and editing an almanac, he had, what is called a "runaway" marriage, and he was working on revisions of the poet Isaac Watt's Psalms (1785).

But during that time his priorities were in completing his
epic poem The Columbiad which was published in 1809.

He died near Cracow, Poland December 24, 1812.