Trumbull, John (the Poet)

TRUMBULL, JOHN (THE POET). (1751–1831). Connecticut. A second cousin of the painter John Trumbull, this John Trumbull is remembered for his comic epic, M'Fingal, the narrative of a Tory squire's misfortunes. "Reprinted more than 30 times between 1782 and 1840, it was the most popular American poem of its length before Longfellow's Evangeline" (Alexander Cowie in DAB). "It borrowed much of its style from the seventeenth-century English versifier, Samuel Butler, the author of Hudibras. Hudibrastic satire, crude but sometimes effectively epigrammatic, was popular in America at this time as a vehicle for the expression of political grievances" (Dennis R. Dean in ODNB). Trumbull wanted to pioneer an independent American aesthetic in poetry, but it was a goal he did not achieve. "He could not conceive of poetry in forms not established by English predecessors. In politics as in literature, Trumbull was fundamentally conservative" (ibid.).

Tremendously precocious, he passed the entrance examination to Yale College at the age of seven but was forced to wait until the more mature age of thirteen before being allowed to enter. He was graduated in 1767 and received his master's degree in 1770. In 1773 he passed his bar examination and moved to Boston, where he continued his studies under John Adams. When Adams left Boston in August 1774, Trumbull moved to New Haven, which he left in 1777 for the relative safety of his native Westbury (later in Watertown), Connecticut Although he was a Patriot and had been writing clever satire since his college days, Trumbull's work had little popular appeal during the war. M'Fingal was published early in 1776, almost simultaneously with Thomas Paine's Common Sense; it had only three editions during the war, whereas 120,000 copies of Common Sense were sold within less than three months. Not until after the war was M'Fingal accepted as an important literary achievement. Although Trumbull was the leader of an important group of writers and poets called the Connecticut (or Hartford) Wits, after 1782 his main interest turned to law and politics. He held his first office in 1789, when he became state's attorney for Hartford County. Appointed judge of the Connecticut superior court in 1801 and judge of the supreme court of errors in 1808, he lost these positions for political reasons in 1819. The next year, The Poetical Works of John Trumbull was published in two volumes. Five years later he moved to Detroit, where he died after living there six years.

SEE ALSO M'Fingal; Salem, Massachusetts; Trumbull Family.

                       revised by Harold E. Selesky