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Samuel Danforth's Almanack Poems And Chronological Tables 1647-1649, Samuel Danforth, Paul Royster (Transcriber & Editor)

University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries: Faculty Publications

Samuel Danforth’s poems from the Almanacks for 1647–1649 are some of the earliest examples of “secular” poetry published in New England. Danforth (1626–1674) was a fellow of Harvard College and an astronomer and mathematician as well as a poet. Although these were not the first almanacs printed in America (the first was by William Peirce, printed at Cambridge in 1639), they are the earliest surviving examples. Danforth’s first printed almanac, for the year 1646 (which survives only in one partial copy), contained no poetry; instead the foot of each month’s page held a running essay on astronomy and the calendar. …