ABSTRACT
James Kirke Paulding (1778 — 1860) was a close friend of Washington Irving, with whom he published the Salmagundi Papers in 1807 and 1808. His satiric Diverting History o f John Bull and Brother Jonathan (1812) used a comic localist setting and plot to transform historical events, and his anglophobia and pro-American sentiments appeared in a number of other satires and burlesques. Paulding also created a mythic frontier hero patterned on Daniel Boone in “Nimrod Wildfire,” in The Lion o f the West (1831), and developed a species of romantic realism in The Dutchman’s Fireside (1831) and other longer fictional works. The Lay o f the Scottish Fiddle (1818) parodied Sir Walter Scott in verse. In 1824 Paulding was made navy agent for New York, and he became secretary of the navy under Martin Van Buren. During the later years of his life, he wrote practically nothing of significance. Amos L. Herold, James Kirke Paulding: Versatile American (New York, 1926), and Evert A. Duyckinck and George L. Duyckinck (eds.), Cyclopedia o f American Literature (2 vols.; New York, 1855), II, 1 — 12, provide more detailed information on Paulding’s life. See also Ralph M. Aderman, “James Kirke Paulding (1778-1860),” Ante bellum Writers in New York and the South (Detroit, 1979), 246-48.
