The Hartford Wits were a group of young writers from Connecticut.
Originally the Connecticut Wits, this group formed in the late eighteenth century as a literary society at Yale College and then assumed a new name, the Hartford Wits. Their writings satirized an outmoded curriculum and, more significantly, society and the politics of the mid-1780s. Their dissatisfaction with the Articles of Confederation appeared in the “The Anarchiad” (1786–1787), written by David Humphreys, Joel Barlow, John Trumbull, and Lemuel Hopkins. In satirizing democratic society, this mock-epic promoted the federal union delineated by the 1787 Federal Convention at Philadelphia.
Read more about Hartford Wits: Later Careers
Famous quotes containing the word wits:
“Thou art a monument without a tomb,
And art alive still while thy book doth live
And we have wits to read and praise to give.”
—Ben Jonson (15721637)