Peter Rugg is a

New England New England is a region consisting of six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York (state), New York to the west and by the ...

literary character who figures in several American short stories and poems. Rugg is a stubborn and angry man, born about 1730. He rides out into a thunderstorm in the year of the

Boston Massacre The Boston Massacre, known in Great Britain as the Incident on King Street, was a confrontation, on March 5, 1770, during the American Revolution in Boston in what was then the colonial-era Province of Massachusetts Bay. In the confrontati ...

(1770), and is cursed to drive his carriage till the end of time. Travelers claim to have sighted him along one road or another, driving a carriage with a child at his side, and declaring that he will reach Boston by nightfall.

Origin

Rugg is often assumed to be a folk character out of New England legends. Actually he was simply made up in 1824 by attorney and writer William Austin (1778–1841). Austin, writing under the pseudonym "Jonathan Dunwell", wrote the tale "Peter Rugg: The Missing Man" in an epistolary style that suggested reportage. Initially the Rugg story appeared in ''The New England Magazine'', a Boston Masonic periodical. When reprinted by ''The New England Galaxy'' almost immediately afterwards, many readers took it to be a nonfiction account. When readers wrote into the ''Galaxy'' asking for further news and references about the Rugg legend, Austin/Dunwell obliged with two further tales, in which Rugg is reported as having been sighted in New York, Virginia and elsewhere. In an epilogue to the original story, also written by "Dunwell", Rugg finally arrives home after nearly 60 years, only to find that his wife has died, his old mansion has been torn down, and the site has been auctioned off for building lots. The fictional origin of the story is sometimes forgotten or ignored even in modern publications. For instance, Daniel Cohen in his '' The Encyclopedia of Ghosts'' (1994) presents the story as an actual report of a supernatural phenomenon, confounding Austin with his fictional first-person narrator: "A complete version of this story is said to come in a letter from a man named William Austin, who claimed to have actually seen and spoken with the ghost. In the letter Austin said that he first encountered the wanderer in 1826 when he was taking a coach out of Boston ..."

Later use

The story is said to have had a profound effect on the young

Nathaniel Hawthorne Nathaniel Hawthorne (né Hathorne; July 4, 1804 – May 19, 1864) was an American novelist and short story writer. His works often focus on history, morality, and religion. He was born in 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts, from a family long associat ...

when he was a student at Bowdoin.

Alexander Woollcott Alexander Humphreys Woollcott (January 19, 1887 – January 23, 1943) was an American drama critic for The New York Times and the New York Herald, critic and commentator for ''The New Yorker'' magazine, a member of the Algonquin Round Table, an ...

, omment in 1937 reprinthttp://gaslight.mtroyal.ca/PetrRugg.htm Peter Rugg is mentioned in Hawthorne's story, "The Virtuoso's Collection", in ''

Mosses from an Old Manse ''Mosses from an Old Manse'' is a short story collection by Nathaniel Hawthorne, first published in 1846. Background and publication history The collection includes several previously published short stories, and was named in honor of The Old M ...

'' (1842).

Herman Melville Herman Melville (Name change, born Melvill; August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance (literature), American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works ar ...

's title character in "

Bartleby, the Scrivener "Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street" is a short story by American writer Herman Melville, first serialized anonymously in two parts in the November and December 1853 issues of ''Putnam's Magazine'' and reprinted with minor textual ...

" seems to allude to Rugg's wandering.In ''The Continuum Encyclopedia of American Literature'', by Steven R. Serafin and

Alfred Bendixen Alfred Bendixen is the founder and Executive Director of the American Literature Association and a lecturer in the Department of Gender and Sexuality Studies at Princeton University. Bendixen gained a Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina in ...

, Rugg has even been claimed as an inspiration for " The M.T.A. Song" about the man who boarded the Boston subway and never returned, written in 1949 but popularized in 1960 by

The Kingston Trio The Kingston Trio is an American folk and pop music group that helped launch the folk revival of the late 1950s to the late 1960s. The group started as a San Francisco Bay Area nightclub act with an original lineup of Dave Guard, Bob Shane, ...

. Two women poets of New England wrote long verse based on the Rugg story.

Louise Imogen Guiney Louise Imogen Guiney (January 7, 1861 – November 2, 1920) was an American poet, essayist and editor, born in Roxbury, Massachusetts. Biography The daughter of Gen. Patrick R. Guiney, an Irish-born American Civil War officer and lawyer,''The ...

, in "Peter Rugg, the Bostonian", published in ''

Scribner's Magazine ''Scribner's Magazine'' was an American periodical published by the publishing house of Charles Scribner's Sons from January 1887 to May 1939. ''Scribner's Magazine'' was the second magazine out of the Scribner's firm, after the publication of ...

'' (December 1891), gave a new version of the story in which the wandering Rugg was accompanied by his "little son" rather than the ten-year-old daughter, Jenny, who was the child in the original tale.

Amy Lowell Amy Lawrence Lowell (February 9, 1874 – May 12, 1925) was an American poet of the imagist school. She posthumously won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1926. Life Amy Lowell was born on February 9, 1874, in Boston, Massachusetts, the daughte ...

published her prose-poem ballad "Before the Storm: the Legend of Peter Rugg" in ''

North American Review The ''North American Review'' (''NAR'') was the first literary magazine in the United States. It was founded in Boston in 1815 by journalist Nathan Hale (journalist), Nathan Hale and others. It was published continuously until 1940, after which i ...

'' (September 1917). In Lowell's piece, Rugg drives through Boston but does not recognize it after many years. Both poets recalled the Rugg story as a ghost tale from their childhood, and evidently were unaware of its literary origin in Austin's stories. According to

Rudyard Kipling Joseph Rudyard Kipling ( ; 30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936)''The Times'', (London) 18 January 1936, p. 12. was an English journalist, novelist, poet, and short-story writer. He was born in British Raj, British India, which inspired much ...

and his English publisher A.S. Frere-Reeves were largely responsible for rediscovering Austin and publicizing the origins of the Peter Rugg tale.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rugg, Peter American folklore American legends Fictional American people Short stories about ghosts

Origin

Later use

See also

References