The Biglow Papers was first published by George Nichols in 1848, collecting verse letters that had appeared in the Boston Courier beginning in 1846. The poems are written in the persona of Hosea Biglow, a young Yankee farmer from the fictional town of Jaalam, Massachusetts, who writes dialect verse opposing the Mexican-American War — which Lowell, like many New England abolitionists, regarded as a slaveholders’ war fought to extend slave territory.
Lowell’s innovation was formal: by putting his political arguments into Yankee dialect verse, he achieved effects that standard English could not. The dialect gave his satire an earthiness and directness that polished verse could not match; it also implied that opposition to the war was not merely the position of educated elites but was grounded in the common sense of ordinary New Englanders. Hosea’s unlettered shrewdness cuts through the rhetorical fog of pro-war propaganda with a clarity that sophisticated argument cannot achieve.
A second series of Biglow Papers appeared during the Civil War (1862–1866), this time supporting the Union cause and attacking Southern secession. The second series is generally considered less successful — supporting the government is less congenial to satire than opposing it — but it contains individual passages of great power.
The Papers influenced American political satire for generations and established the literary use of dialect as a vehicle for serious ideas — a tradition that reaches through Mark Twain to Ring Lardner and beyond.
Collecting The Biglow Papers
First edition (George Nichols, Cambridge, 1848): Cloth binding. First series.
Market values:
- First edition, first series (1848): $200–$600
- First edition, second series (1867): $60–$150
- Complete Riverside Press editions: $30–$80