Home › W › Wigglesworth, Michael

Wigglesworth, Michael

clergyman, author, poet, was born Oct. 18, 1631, in England. He was a congregational clergyman, pastor at Malden, Mass., in 1656-1705. The Day of Doom, his chief work, appearing in 1662, was for more than a century the most popular poem in New England. It is an epic of the Last Judgment, not without gleams of poetic merit, but full of what must be styled savage theology. Meat Out of the Eater is a much inferior poem, but was very popular for a long period. God's Controversy with New England, also in verse, and A Short Discourse on Eternity, comprise his remaining works. He died June 10, 1705, in Malden, Mass.