author
Michael Wigglesworth
1631–1705
Best known for writing the hugely popular Puritan poem The Day of Doom, this early New England minister and physician helped shape colonial religious writing. His work is remembered for its plain force, moral urgency, and vivid picture of seventeenth-century belief.
2 Audiobooks
The Day of Doom; Or, a Poetical Description of the Great and Last Judgement
by Michael Wigglesworth
The Day of Doom; Or, A Poetical Description of the Great and Last Judgment With Other Poems
by Michael Wigglesworth
About the author
Born in England in 1631, he came to New England as a child with his family and later graduated from Harvard in 1651. He went on to serve as a tutor and fellow there before becoming a minister in Malden, Massachusetts; sources also note that he practiced medicine.
He is most closely associated with The Day of Doom (1662), a long poem about the Last Judgment that became one of the best-known and best-selling books in early New England. Its direct style and strong Puritan message made it widely read for generations.
Remembered today as a minister, physician, and poet, he offers a vivid window into colonial American religion and literature. Later readers have often turned to his writing not only for its theology, but also for what it reveals about everyday fears, hopes, and ideals in seventeenth-century New England.