Judd, Sylvester (1813 - 1853)

Genre: Drama/Theatre/Film, General Fiction, Poetry

Sylvester Judd was born in Westhampton, MA and raised in Northampton, MA. He attended Hopkins Academy in Hadley, MA, Yale and Harvard Divinity School. He was a Unitarian minister who was ordained at the East Parish Unitarian Church in Augusta, ME and served as minister there for many years. He was chaplain of the Maine State legislature until dismissed due to his outspoken preaching on pacifist themes which began to alienate his parishoners.

He wrote novels, plays and poetry and is considered by some to be the first transcendental novelist. His best work, the novel Margaret was described by James Russell Lowell as "the first Yankee book, with the soul of Down East..."

He was 39 at the time of his death in 1853.

Selected Bibliography

  • A Moral Review of the Revolutinary War, or Some of the Evils of the Event Considered. A Discourse... (1842)
  • The True Dignity of Politics: A Sermon (1850)
  • Philo: An Evangeliad (1850)
  • The Birthright Church: A Discourse by the Late Rev. Sylvester Judd (1853)
  • The Church In a Series of Discourses (1854)
  • Margaret: A Tale of the Real and Ideal, Blight and Bloom (1871)