James Kirke Paulding

James Kirke Paulding

James Kirke Paulding (born August 22, 1778 in Nine Partners , New York , † April 6, 1860 in Hyde Park , New York) was an American writer and US Secretary of the Navy .

biography

Writing career

Washington Irving and his literary friends - this engraving from 1864 shows an imaginary meeting of the greats of American literature in Washington Irving's library. Irving (in the middle of the picture) is portrayed as the "father" and center of American literature.
Pictured from left to right are: Henry Theodore Tuckerman , Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. , William Gilmore Simms , Fitz-Greene Halleck , Nathaniel Hawthorne , Henry Wadsworth Longfellow , Nathaniel Parker Willis , William Hickling Prescott , Washington Irving , James Kirke Paulding, Ralph Waldo Emerson , William Cullen Bryant , John Pendleton Kennedy , James Fenimore Cooper , George Bancroft . The changes in the canon of literature since that time become clear in the selection : many canonical authors of the 19th century such as Herman Melville and Walt Whitman are missing, and former grandees such as Tuckerman and Willis have now been forgotten.

Paulding was related by marriage to his brother Washington Irving through his sister Julia Paulding, the wife of William Irving . Together with these, he founded the satirical magazine Salmagundi , which appeared until 1808, in 1807 , in which the three also wrote all articles under numerous changing pseudonyms. However, he himself has also been the subject of satirical reviews such as by Joseph Rodman Drake , who wrote articles under the pseudonym Croaker in the Evening Post newspaper . On the other hand, he himself wrote articles in The Analectic Magazine .

In the following years he published publications ranging from novels and satire to biographical works. His most important books were:

• The Diverting History of John Bull and Brother Jonathan (1812)
• The Lay of the Scotch Fiddle (1813)
• The Backwoodsman (1818)
• A Sketch of Old England by a New England Man (1822)
• Koningsmarke, the Long Finne (1823)
• John Bull in America, or the New Munchausen (1825)
• The Merry Tales of the Three Wise Men of Gotham (1826)
• The New Mirror for Travelers (1828)
• Tales of the Good Woman, by a Doubtful Gentleman (1829)
• Chronicles of the City of Gotham, from the Papers of a Retired Common Councilman (1830)
• The Dutchman's Fireside (1831)
• Westward Ho! (1832)
• Life of George Washington (1835)
• View of Slavery in the United States (1836)
• The Book of St. Nicholas (1837)
• A Gift from Fairy Land (1838)
• The Old Continental, or the Price of Liberty (1846)
• The Puritan and His Daughter (1849)

Furthermore, he belonged to the circle of friends of Edgar Allan Poe and tried in vain for them to publish his articles in various magazines, but was able to persuade Poe to write his only novel The Report of Arthur Gordon Pym in 1838.

Promotion to US Secretary of the Navy

In addition to his literary work, he became an employee of the United States Department of the Navy in 1815 , where he was initially secretary of the Board of Navy Commissioners until 1823 . He was then between 1824 and 1838 naval agent of the Port Authority of New York .

On July 1, 1838, he was finally appointed by President Martin Van Buren to the Secretary of the Navy in his cabinet and held this office until the end of Van Buren's presidency on March 4, 1841. Named in his honor the Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names in 1955 Paulding Bay , a bay on the Banzare coast of Wilkesland in Antarctica .

Web links

• James Kirke Paulding in nndb (English)
• James Kirke Paulding in the Miller Center of Public Affairs of the University of Virginia (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Further information on printing in a Princeton University blog: The Sensation of the Day is the Great National Painting ( Memento of the original from August 20, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.