Timothy Dwight, 1785-1794

DWIGHT, Timothy (1752-1817). The Conquest of Canaan; a Poem in Eleven Books. Hartford: Elisha Babcock, 1785. BAL 5040. 12mo (169 x 105mm). viii, 304pp. Contemporary boards (detached, spine panel lacking); modern cloth box. Provenance: Lemuel G. Olmstead (blindstamp on title).

–. Greenfield Hill: a Poem in Seven Parts. New York: Childs and Swaine, 1794. BAL 5048. [Bound with:] The Triumph of Infidelity. "Printed in the world," 1788. BAL 5041A. [And: A Discourse on the Genuineness and Authenticity of the New-Testament. New York: George Bunce & Co, 1794.] BAL 5047. Three volumes in one, octavo (205 x 107mm). Final work lacking title page and first gathering. Modern half calf and marbled boards. Provenance: "J. Holsted" (pencil signature on first title).

Three first editions, in two bound volumes, including the first American epic poem, The Conquest of Canaan. Dwight, the 8th president of Yale College, was also a Congregationalist minister and theologian who was particularly worried about his students’ susceptibility to Deism and other French-imported intellectual heresies, something he attempted to combat through both his prose and his poetry. His verse satire attacking Voltaire, The Triumph of Infidelity, although likely printed in Hartford or New Haven, bears the curious imprint “Printed in the World”—hinting at the global scope of Dwight’s polemic.