Ebenezer Cooke

Probably born around 1665 in London, Ebenezer Cooke later settled in colonial Maryland, where he worked as a lawyer as well as a poet. He is a shadowy figure in early American literature, and even some basic details of his life remain uncertain.

Cooke is best known for The Sot-Weed Factor: Or, a Voyage to Maryland, a lively satire that pokes fun at life in the colony and the people he met there. The poem helped secure his place in literary history, and some scholars have described it as one of the first important satirical works produced in British North America.

He is thought to have died around 1732. Though not much is known about him compared with later writers, his surviving work offers a vivid, irreverent glimpse of colonial America.