Joseph Rodman Drake papers

1817, 1903

Joseph Rodman Drake (1795-1820) was an American poet. Drake's poems were frequently published in the Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, and he was considered a member of the "Knickerbocker Group." In 1819, Drake and fellow poet Fitz-Greene Halleck wrote a series of satirical verses for the New York Evening Post, which were published under the penname "The Croakers." He died of tuberculosis soon after. The papers consist of one letter to Fitz-Greene Halleck, probably from 1817, informing Halleck of the suicide of Walter Franklin; one undated manuscript verse, signed Croakers, "to _____ Esquire;" and an image of Drake published by the Society of Iconophiles in 1903