John Pendleton Kennedy
John P.
Kennedy, in full John Pendleton Kennedy,
pseudonym Mark Littleton (b. Oct. 25,
1795, Baltimore, Md., U.S.—d. Aug. 18,
1870, Newport, R.I.), American statesman
and writer whose best remembered work
was his historical fiction.
Kennedy
was admitted to the Maryland bar in
1816. From 1821 he served two terms in
the Maryland House of Delegates and
three terms in the U.S. Congress and was
secretary of the navy in the cabinet of
President Millard Fillmore. In the
latter capacity, he organized Commodore
Matthew Perry’s trip to Japan.
Meanwhile, using the pen name of Mark
Littleton, Kennedy wrote historical
novels, including Swallow Barn (1832),
sketches of the post-Revolutionary life
of gentlemen on Virginia plantations,
and Rob of the Bowl (1838), a tale of
colonial Maryland in which Protestants
overthrow Roman Catholic control.
Kennedy’s major work of nonfiction is
Memoirs of the Life of William Wirt
(1849), about the man who was an
attorney for the prosecution in the
trial of Aaron Burr for treason. He also
coedited the satirical magazine Red Book
(1818–19) and wrote political articles
for the National Intelligencer. His
novels were his main achievement,
however; although their style was
imitative of the work of Washington
Irving and James Fenimore Cooper, they
were capably and imaginatively written.
