Poems of Philip Freneau, Volume II - The Original Classic Edition

Philip Morin Freneau (January 2, 1752 ? December 18, 1832) (spelled Phillip Frenau in Oxfords Poetry of Slavery Anthology 2003) was a notable American poet, nationalist, polemicist, sea captain and newspaper editor sometimes called the Poet of the American Revolution. The non-political works of Freneau are a combination of neoclassicism and romanticism. His poem The House of Night makes its mark as one of the first romantic poems written and published in America. The gothic elements and dark imagery are later seen in poetry by Edgar Allan Poe, who is well known for his gothic works of literature. Freneaus nature poem, The Wild Honey Suckle (1786), is considered an early seed to the later Transcendentalist movement taken up by William Cullen Bryant, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau. Romantic primitivism is also anticipated by his poems The Indian Burying Ground, and Noble Savage. Although he is not as well known as Ralph Waldo Emerson or James Fenimore Cooper, Freneau introduced many of the themes and images in his literature that later authors are famous for.