Joseph Dennie

Joseph Dennie
Portrait of Joseph Dennie by James Sharples, c. 1790
Born	Joseph Dennie August 30, 1768 Boston, Massachusetts
Died	January 7, 1812 (1812-01-08) (aged 43) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Other names	Oliver Oldschool Academicus Socialis
Education	Harvard College
Occupation	Author, journalist, editor, secretary
Notable credit(s)	The Lay Preacher Port Folio

Joseph Dennie (August 30, 1768 – January 7, 1812) was an American author and journalist who was one of the foremost men of letters of the Federalist Era. A Federalist, Dennie is best remembered for his series of essays entitled The Lay Preacher and as the founding editor of Port Folio, a journal espousing classical republican values. Port Folio was the most highly regarded and successful literary publication of its time, and the first important political and literary journal in the United States.Timothy Dwight IV once referred to Dennie as "the Addison of America" and "the father of American Belles-Lettres."

Dennie was born on August 30, 1768, in Boston, Massachusetts to Joseph Dennie, a member of a well-to-do merchant family, and his wife Mary Green, whose father was Bartholomew Green, Jr. The Greens were a prominent printing family in colonial America; the progenitor of the family, Samuel Green, emigrated from England with John Winthrop and was one of the first printers in the colonies. Having moved to Lexington at the age of seven, Dennie returned to Boston in 1783 to study bookkeeping and later clerk in a counting house. He began preparing to enter Harvard College in 1785, under the guidance of Reverend Samuel West. West had a significant impact on Dennie, fostering his pupil's interest in literature, as well as instilling in Dennie a decidedly pro-British mindset.