Sot-Weed Factor, The; or, A Voyage to Maryland (1708).

a satire by <IR> EBENEZER COOK </IR> . The author may have been, as he says in this poem, an Englishman who came to Maryland in order to act as a factor, or agent, of a British merchant dealing in tobacco, but his true identity is problematical. The poem is a Hudibrastic narrative of the author's dealings in America, his effort to recover property stolen from him, and his mistreatment in the courts. It ends with a trenchant curse on America and all its inhabitants. In 1730 appeared a sequel, Sotweed Redivivus, or The Planter's Looking-Glass, by "E.C. Gent." It is a much more serious and less readable production, directed against overproduction of tobacco. In a revised version this was also printed in <IR> THE MARYLAND MUSE </IR> (1731), which was edited by Lawrence C. Wroth for the Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society (1934).