Joseph Hopkinson

Joseph Hopkinson (November 12, 1770 – January 15, 1842) was a United States representative from Pennsylvania and a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

Education and career

Born on November 12, 1770, in Philadelphia, Province of Pennsylvania, British America, Hopkinson received an Artium Baccalaureus degree in 1786 from the University of Pennsylvania, an Artium Magister degree in 1789 from the same institution and read law in 1791, He was admitted to the bar and entered private practice in Philadelphia and Easton, Pennsylvania from 1791 to 1814.

Congressional service

Hopkinson was elected as a Federalist from Pennsylvania's 1st congressional district to the United States House of Representatives of the 14th United States Congress.

First American edition of the Complete Works of Shakespeare Hopkinson edited the first American edition of the Complete Works of Shakespeare, published in Philadelphia in 1795. It is also the first edition of Shakespeare's complete works to be published outside of the British Isles.

Hopkinson also penned the edition's preface and "The Life of the Author," marking the first instance of published American literary criticism of Shakespeare. In the preface, Hopkinson criticizes the British editorial treatment of Shakespeare, claiming that British editors (like Alexander Pope and Samuel Johnson) have "clogged [London editions] with...successive explanations" in pursuit of editorial preeminence. The public quarrels between British editors regarding their analyses, Hopkinson believed, stemmed from a desire for self-aggrandizement that detracted from Shakespeare's work itself. In protest, Hopkinson offers the American reader an edition of Shakespeare absent many of these so-called superfluous footnotes and encourages the American reader to engage with Shakespeare on their own terms.

Composition

Hopkinson wrote the anthem Hail, Columbia in 1798.

Family

Hopkinson was the son of Francis Hopkinson, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, a member of the Continental Congress and the first United States District Judge for Pennsylvania. In 1794, he married the daughter of Governor of Pennsylvania Thomas Mifflin.