Park Benjamin Sr.

He was born in Demerara, British Guiana, August 14, 1809, but was early sent to New England, and graduated from Trinity College, Hartford, Conn.

On July 8, 1839, he joined with Rufus Wilmot Griswold to produce The Evening Tattler, a journal which promised "the sublimest songs of the great poets–the eloquence of the most renowned orators–the heart-entrancing legends of love and chivalry–the laughter-loving jests of all lands".

In addition to fiction and poetry, it also published foreign news, local gossip, jokes, and New York police reports.

He was sued for libel by James Fenimore Cooper, and was on personal terms with Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe.

[2] Edgar Allan Poe had mixed feelings about Benjamin, calling his writing "lucid, terse, and pungent" and his character "witty, often cuttingly sarcastic, but seldom humorous".