(The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration a...)
The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration and rapidly growing technology and expanding record-keeping made possible by advances in the printing press. In its determination to preserve the century of revolution, Gale initiated a revolution of its own: digitization of epic proportions to preserve these invaluable works in the largest archive of its kind. Now for the first time these high-quality digital copies of original 18th century manuscripts are available in print, making them highly accessible to libraries, undergraduate students, and independent scholars. Western literary study flows out of eighteenth-century works by Alexander Pope, Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, Frances Burney, Denis Diderot, Johann Gottfried Herder, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and others. Experience the birth of the modern novel, or compare the development of language using dictionaries and grammar discourses. ++++ The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification: ++++ Bodleian Library (Oxford) W028313 Preface dated Philadelphia, Jan. 1788. A subsequent edition (Evans 21214), with preface dated July 1788, names Peter Markoe as author. Philadelphia : Printed by William Spotswood, M.DCC.LXXXVIII. 1788. 4,22p. ; 8°
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( “A pungent satire on American affairs.” —Samuel Eliot M...)
“A pungent satire on American affairs.” —Samuel Eliot Morison In 1787, while American sailors languished in a Barbary prison, delegates debated the Constitution in Philadelphia. Despite America’s desire to respond to the crisis, without a central government, the new republic had no means to create a naval force. Enter an anonymously published book, The Algerine Spy in Pennsylvania: or, Letters Written by a Native of Algiers on the Affairs of the United States in America, which began circulating among the delegates. Consisting of a series of letters ostensibly written by an Algerian agent “Mehmet” back to his leader, the spy predicted that the former colonies would never be able to resolve their differences and be “ruined by disunion.” The book created a sensation and it helped tip the balance for those in favor of adopting the new Constitution. Following the Constitution’s final ratification in 1789, the United States created a navy and began asserting its power overseas. With its commentary about men and women, business and pleasure, and historical and religious comparisons between nations, The Algerine Spy in Pennsylvania provides both a contemporary snapshot of early American life and the political ideas of the period. Never before reprinted, and recently rated one of the five best works in the history of America’s encounter with the Arab world, this new edition is edited by historian Timothy Marr, who reconsiders the importance of this early work in the political and literary history of the United States.
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Peter Markoe was the eldest son of Abraham Markoe by his first wife, Elizabeth Rogers (née Kenny). He was born on the island of Santa Cruz (or St. Croix) in the Danish West Indies, probably between January 31 and February 16, 1752, though at his matriculation at Pembroke College, Oxford, February 17, 1767, his age was given as sixteen.
The statement that he was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, appears to be without foundation.
On May 29, 1775, he was admitted to Lincoln's Inn. It is usually said that he was in England during the period of the Revolution, but in 1775 he is listed as captain of Light Horse, 3rd Battalion, Philadelphia City Militia. The Danish decree of neutrality (1775) which caused his father to resign from the Light Horse, may have prevented Peter Markoe's further participation in the war. It is possible that he returned to Santa Cruz, perhaps more than once, to transact business for his father after the latter settled in Philadelphia. (One of his brothers was drowned on such a trip. ) Among his poems are "Verses Addressed to His Excellency General Van Roepstorf on his arrival in St. Croix, 1771" and "To Her Excellency Lady Clausen, of St. Croix, on Her Birth-Day, 1780. " In 1784 he published in Philadelphia The Patriot Chief, a tragedy, the scene of which is laid in Lydia. It was offered to Lewis Hallam, manager of the American Company, but rejected, and apparently was never produced. It called forth, however, an Epistle by Markoe's friend, Col. John Parke, "To Mr. Peter Markoe, on His Excellent Tragedy Called The Patriot Chief", in which the author urged Markoe to treat native themes and native heroes. In 1787 he published by subscription a volume of Miscellaneous Poems, "many of them" according to the Preface, "written when I was very young. " The following January (1788) he published The Times, a satirical poem full of allusions to local personages, only a few of whom can now be identified. Part of it had previously appeared "in one of the public papers" (Preface), and the whole was republished in July (printed for Prichard & Hall) with the addition of several hundred lines. A contemporary review of the poem in Noah Webster's American Magazine (September 1788) resents Markoe's criticism of Joel Barlow but adds: "It is but justice to Mr. Markoe to declare, that we think him one of the first poetic geniuses in America. " In 1790 he published The Reconciliation: or, the Triumph of Nature, one of the earliest comic operas written in America. Charles Evans attributes to Markoe The Algerine Spy in Pennsylvania: or, Letters Written by a Native of Algiers on the Affairs of the United States in America, from the Close of the Year 1783 to the Meeting of the Convention (1787) and The Storm, a Poem: Descriptive of the Late Tempest, Which Raged with Such Fury Throughout the Southern Parts of North-America, in July, 1788, issued with the Philadelphia edition of William Falconer's The Shipwreck, published in 1788. Markoe died in Philadelphia, in his fortieth year according to family tradition, and was buried in the graveyard of Christ Church in that city.
(The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration a...)
( “A pungent satire on American affairs.” —Samuel Eliot M...)
book
He seems to have had a reputation for conviviality not to be assumed from the sentiments expressed in his verse. He managed the couplet with ease but without distinction. That he was interested in arts other than literature is to be inferred from the design for a frontispiece which he contributed to Col. John Parke's volume, The Lyrical Works of Horace Translated into English Verse; to Which Are Added a Number of Original Poems (1786).
