Joseph Rodman Drake poem Abelard to Eloise , MSS 7577

Conditions Governing Access

This collection is open for research.

Preferred Citation

MSS 7577, Joseph Rodman Drake poem (addition 5) in the Clifton Waller Barrett library, Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia Library.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

This collection was a purchase from Brick Row Bookshop to the Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia Library on 28 January 2019.

Biographical / Historical

Born in New York City, American Poet, Joseph Rodman Drake was orphaned when young and entered a mercantile house. While still a child, he showed a talent for writing poems. He was educated at Columbia College. In 1813 he began studying in a physician's office. In 1816 he began to practice medicine and in the same year married Sarah, daughter of Henry Eckford, a naval architect.

In 1819, together with his friend and fellow poet Fitz-Greene Halleck, he wrote a series of satirical verses for the New York Evening Post, which were published under the penname "The Croakers." Drake died of consumption a year later at the age of twenty-five.

As a writer, Drake is considered part of the "Knickerbocker group", which also included Halleck, Washington Irving, William Cullen Bryant, James Kirke Paulding, Gulian Crommelin Verplanck, Robert Charles Sands, Lydia M. Child, and Nathaniel Parker Willis.[1] A collection of poems by Joseph Rodman Drake, The Culprit Fay and Other Poems, was published posthumously by his daughter in 1835. His best-known poems are the long title-poem of that collection, and the patriotic "The American Flag" which was set as a cantata for two soloists, choir and orchestra by the Czech composer Antonín Dvořák in 1892-93.[2] "The Culprit Fay" served as the inspiration for a 1908 orchestral rhapsody of the same name by Henry Kimball Hadley

Source: "Joseph Rodmand Drake" Wikipedia. Accessed 8/13/2025 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Rodman_Drake

poetry