Ms. Coll. 251: Literary Models, Religion, and Romantic Science in John Syng Dorsey’s Poems, 1805-1818

Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Penn collection
Transcription Collection (Penn Manuscript Collective)
Degree type
Discipline
Subject
John Syng Dorsey
American poetry
American medicine
Spirituality
American Literature
American Material Culture
Archival Science
Digital Humanities
English Language and Literature
Health Sciences and Medical Librarianship
History
History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
United States History
Funder
Grant number
Copyright date
Distributor
Author
DeStefano, Samantha
Contributor
Abstract

John Syng Dorsey (1783-1818) was a Philadelphia surgeon and the author of The Elements of Surgery (1813), the first American textbook of surgery. He was also the author of Poems, 1805-1818 (UPenn Ms. Coll. 251), a forty-page collection that reveals his interests in spirituality, the history of science and medicine, and classical and eighteenth-century British poetry. Decades after Dorsey’s death, his son Robert Ralston Dorsey (1808-1869) revised his father’s poems, identified classical sources with Latin and Italian quotations, and completed Dorsey’s final, unfinished poem. This project analyzes Dorsey’s literary, scientific, and biblical allusions and contextualizes his Poems within early nineteenth-century literary history and Romantic science and medicine. This article is an expanded version of the annotated transcription and critical introduction published as “Religion, Writing, and Romantic Science in John Syng Dorsey’s Poems, 1805-1818” in Volume 1 (Fall/Winter 2017/18) of Journal of the Penn Manuscript Collective. Corrections to the original transcription, as well as the discovery of four pages of riddles at the back of the volume, reveal additional literary and theological allusions, information about the involvement of Dorsey’s wife’s family and his medical colleagues in Philadelphia charitable organizations, and Dorsey’s connections to elite early nineteenth-century Philadelphia society. The expanded introduction and annotations analyze this new evidence and discuss the five poems from Ms. Coll. 251 and eleven poems not included in the manuscript that Dorsey published in the Port Folio, an influential Philadelphia literary journal.

Advisor
Date Range for Data Collection (Start Date)
Date Range for Data Collection (End Date)
Digital Object Identifier
Series name and number
Publication date
2019-05-01
Volume number
Issue number
Publisher
Publisher DOI
Journal Issue
Comments
Recommended citation
Collection