Ebenezer Cook

Ebenezer Cook

Ebenezer Cooke (ca. 1665 ca. 1732), a London-born poet, wrote what some scholars consider the first American satire: The Sotweed Factor, or A Voyage to Maryland, A Satyr (1708). He has been fictionalized by John Barth as the comically innocent protagonist of The Sot-Weed Factor, a novel in which a series of fantastic misadventures leads Cooke to write his poem. As Barth explained, The SotWeed Factor began with the title and, of course, Ebenezer Cooke's original poem.... Nobody knows where the real chap is buried; I made up a grave for Ebenezer because I wanted to write his epitaph.'

Ebenezer Cook's Books:

[The Sot Weed Factor]