Biglow Papers

work by Lowell

Written and fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Article History

Biglow Papers, satirical poetry in Yankee dialect by James Russell Lowell. The first series of Biglow Papers was published in The Boston Courier newspaper in 1846–48 and collected in book form in 1848. The second series was published in The Atlantic Monthly during the American Civil War and collected in a book published in 1867.

Lowell opposed the Mexican-American War, regarding it as an attempt to extend slavery. The first series of poems expressed Lowell’s opposition to the war in the voice of rustic poet Hosea Biglow. Birdofredum Sawin, one of Lowell’s most inspired inventions, is a Massachusetts wastrel who reports on the war in several letters. He loses an arm, a leg, and an eye in the fighting. The radical fires in Lowell had cooled somewhat by the time he issued the second series of Biglow Papers, which contain less-effective satire of the wartime South.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Kathleen Kuiper.