Sot Weed from the Maryland Muse

 

EBENEZER COOKE (fl. ca. 1680s—1730s?) of Maryland is a major figure in colonial American literature. He is best known for the long satirical poem “The Sot-Weed Factor.” (The sot-weed is tobacco, mainstay of the Southern, and American economy in the colonial period, and the factor is a figure long familiar in the South—the seaport merchant who sold and exported the plantations’ tobacco, cotton, or rice, and shipped to the plantation such purchased goods as were requested. A Yankee writer named Barth in the 20th century appropriated Cooke’s title for a novel.) The first item is from “The Sot-Weed Factor” (1708) and the second is a preface to Cooke’s long poem “The Maryland Muse.” (1731). Cooke shows the humorous and positive spirit of the South at a time when the literature of New England consisted entirely of Puritan cant.

More @ The Abbeville Institute