Adams Family Correspondence, volume 12
Your kind letter of the month of March last deserved an earlier answer. but my absence from this City must be my excuse.1 The Lay Preacher has not escaped the notice of any one who has a taste for fine writing and you may be assured it has afforded me great pleasure to hear my friend Dennie mentioned as one of the most charming writers of The age. Unfortunately I have mislaid The proposals you sent me, or I should have procured some more subscribers I 114 wish you had sent me the Museum without consulting me for whatever litterary production you may be concerned in will always be eagerly read and as far as in my power assisted by me: Nor have your writings passed unobserved by those who are much better judges than myself My father has requested me to subscribe for two setts of The Museum for him and mentioned you in a manner that were I to relate you would perhaps think flattering2
I wish you to send another subscription paper that I may give you what aid is in my power.
With sentements of sincere esteem I am / Your friend and huml Sert
RC (MH-H:Joseph Dennie Papers, MS Am 715 [55]); internal address: “Joseph Dennie Junr.”
Not found.
Joseph Dennie Jr. (1768–1812), Harvard 1790, was the editor of the Walpole, N.H., Farmer’s Weekly Museum and the author of a regular column therein entitled “The Lay Preacher,” a collection of which had been published as The Lay Preacher; or, Short Sermons, for Idle Readers, Walpole, N.H., 1796, Evans, No. 30335. In 1797 Dennie sent a solicitation for subscribers among booksellers, printers, and “Gentlemen, inclined to foster literary habits.” The Adamses not only subscribed to this and Dennie’s later endeavor the Port Folio, both JQA and TBA would also contribute as writers (Catherine O’Donnell Kaplan, Men of Letters in the Early Republic: Cultivating Forums of Citizenship, Chapel Hill, N.C., 2008, p. 7, 117, 122, 137, 143, 144, 145–146; Dennie, An Established Literary and Political Paper. The Editor of the Farmer’s Weekly Museum … Offers His Paper to the Publick, no imprint, 1797, MWA, Evans, No. 49460).