Joseph Dennie (August 30, 1768 – January 7, 1812) was an American author and journalist who was one of the foremost men of letters of the Federalist Era.

[1] A Federalist, Dennie is best remembered for his series of essays entitled The Lay Preacher and as the founding editor of The Port Folio, a journal espousing classical republican values.

[18] Throughout the 1790s Dennie contributed to various journals, including the Federal Orrery and the Massachusetts Magazine, often using pen names such as Academicus and Socialis.

William Spotswood, a Boston printer and bookseller, agreed to oversee the entire enterprise, splitting the profits evenly with Dennie.

[21] Dennie's disappointment over the failure of The Tablet inspired him to begin work on The Lay Preacher, the first of which appeared in The Farmer's Weekly Museum, a New Hampshire newspaper which was the leading literary journal of the 1790s.

[22] After Dennie took over as editor of the paper in 1796, its circulation increased dramatically, stretching, as one commentator put it, "from Maine to Georgia.

[6] Dennie collaborated often with his friend Royall Tyler;[24][25] the two wrote a satirical column by the name of "The Shop of Messrs. Colon and Spondee" which appeared in the Museum.

Under the pseudonym Oliver Oldschool, Esq.,[31][32] Dennie wrote, in 1803, a scathing attack on Jeffersonian democracy, for which he was brought up on charges of seditious libel.

The institution of a scheme of policy so radically contemptible and vicious is a memorable example of what the villany of some men can devise, the folly of others receive, and both establish in spite of reason, reflection, and sensation.