Michael Wigglesworth

Michael Wigglesworth (1631–1705) was born in Yorkshire, England, and taken as a child of seven to New England, where his family settled at New Haven. He graduated from Harvard in 1651, served there as a tutor and fellow, and in 1656 became minister of the church at Malden, Massachusetts, a charge he held for the rest of his life although long periods of ill health kept him from the pulpit. He also practised as a physician.

The Day of Doom; or, A Poetical Description of the Great and Last Judgment, published in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1662, is a Calvinist vision of the Last Judgment in 224 eight-line ballad stanzas. It is generally counted the first American best-seller: the first printing of about 1,800 copies sold out within a year, and the poem was reprinted for generations and learned by heart by New England children. It was followed by Meat out of the Eater (1670) and God's Controversy with New England (1662, printed 1871).

This selection follows the New York reprint of 1867, edited by John Ward Dean from the 1715 sixth edition. It gives The Day of Doom with its prefatory and closing verses ('To the Christian Reader', 'A Prayer unto Christ the Judge of the World', 'A Short Discourse on Eternity' and 'A Postscript unto the Reader') and the shorter poems printed with it. The editor's memoir, the notes, the marginal Scripture references and summaries, the commendatory verses by J. Mitchel and the funeral sermon and epitaph by Cotton Mather are left out.