Opie Percival Read (born December 22, 1852, Nashville Tennessee; d. November 2, 1939, Chicago Illinois) was an American journalist and humorist. His bibliography lists 60 published books.
Opie Percival Read (born December 22, 1852, Nashville Tennessee; d. November 2, 1939, Chicago Illinois) was an American journalist and humorist. His bibliography lists 60 published books.
Prior to 1887, Opie Read edited five separate newspapers, all in the U.S. South: the Statesville Argus, the Bowling Green Pantograph , and the Louisville Courier-Journal , all in Kentucky, as well as the Evening Post, and Gazette in Little Rock, Arkansas. The Gazette was a predecessor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette . In 1882, Read founded his own humor magazine, the Arkansas Traveler , which he carried on after leaving newspaper journalism in 1887.
Read brought the Arkansas Traveler, a flowing pen, and a command of Southern dialect to Chicago in 1887. He spent the remainder of his life in the ”Windy City” (Chicago).
Read's bibliography shows that in his first 20 full years in Chicago (1888–1908) he published 54 separate books, of which 31 were novels, 18 were book-length compilations of short fiction such as that published in the Arkansas Traveler, and five were works of non-fiction.
As a novelist, Read is credited with bringing the phrase "There's a sucker born every minute" into print in his 1898 novel A Yankee from the West, [1] although the phrase seems to have been in verbal use before this and is often credited to P.T. Barnum.
After 1908, Read appears to have gone into semi-retirement. His authorial productivity noticeably slackened during the thirty remaining years of his life, although he did publish six additional books (two of them juveniles).
Read's works carried titles like A Kentucky Colonel (Laird & Lee, 1890), The Jucklins (1896), and Opie Read in the Ozarks: Including Many of the Rich, Rare, Quaint, Eccentric, Ignorant and Superstitious Sayings of the Natives of Missouri and Arkansaw (1905).
Read's standing was affected by the fact that many of his works, such as The Jucklins, were published as dime novels. Many later critics have dismissed Read as a presenter of lower-class white Southern stereotypes for middle-class Northerners.
Andrew Lang was a Scottish poet, novelist, literary critic, and contributor to the field of anthropology. He is best known as a collector of folk and fairy tales. The Andrew Lang lectures at the University of St Andrews are named after him.
Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins, better known as Anthony Hope, was a British novelist and playwright. He was a prolific writer, especially of adventure novels but he is remembered predominantly for only two books: The Prisoner of Zenda (1894) and its sequel Rupert of Hentzau (1898). These works, "minor classics" of English literature, are set in the contemporaneous fictional country of Ruritania and spawned the genre known as Ruritanian romance, books set in fictional European locales similar to the novels. Zenda has inspired many adaptations, most notably the 1937 Hollywood movie of the same name and the 1952 version.
Charles Grant Blairfindie Allen was a Canadian science writer and novelist, educated in England. He was a public promoter of evolution in the second half of the nineteenth century.
George Robert Gissing was an English novelist, who published 23 novels between 1880 and 1903. In the 1890s he was considered one of the three greatest novelists in England, and by the 1940s he had been recognised as a literary genius. Gissing's best-known works have reappeared in modern editions. They include The Nether World (1889), New Grub Street (1891) and The Odd Women (1893). He retains a small but devoted group of followers.
Ferguson Wright Hume, known as Fergus Hume, was a prolific English novelist, known for his detective fiction, thrillers and mysteries.
Looking Backward: 2000–1887 is a utopian science fiction novel by the American journalist and writer Edward Bellamy first published in 1888.
Sir Walter Besant was an English novelist and historian. William Henry Besant was his brother, and another brother, Frank, was the husband of Annie Besant.
Francis Marion Crawford was an American writer noted for his many novels, especially those set in Italy, and for his classic weird and fantastical stories.
Mary Louisa Molesworth, néeStewart was an English writer of children's stories who wrote for children under the name of Mrs Molesworth. Her first novels, for adult readers, Lover and Husband (1869) to Cicely (1874), appeared under the pseudonym of Ennis Graham. Her name occasionally appears in print as M. L. S. Molesworth.
Joseph Alexander Altsheler was an American newspaper reporter, editor and author of popular juvenile historical fiction. He was a prolific writer, and produced fifty novels and at least fifty-three short stories. Thirty-two of his novels were part of his seven series:
Alice French, better known as Octave Thanet, was an American novelist and short fiction writer.
Elizabeth Thomasina Meade Smith (1844–1914), writing under the pseudonym L. T. Meade, was a prolific writer of girls' stories. She was born in Bandon, County Cork, Ireland, daughter of Rev. R. T. Meade, of Nohoval, County Cork. She later moved to London, where she married Alfred Toulmin Smith in September 1879.
Morley Charles Roberts was an English novelist and short story writer, best known for The Private Life of Henry Maitland.
Edmund Henry Garrett (1853–1929) was an American illustrator, bookplate-maker, and author—as well as a highly respected painter—renowned for his illustrations of the legends of King Arthur.
Sarah Barnwell Elliott was an American novelist, short story writer, and an advocate of women's rights.
Frederick James Whishaw was a Russian Empire-born British novelist, historian, poet and musician. A popular author of children's fiction at the turn of the 20th century, he published over forty volumes of his work between 1884 and 1914.
Edwin William Pugh was an English writer. He published 33 books, primarily novels and short story collections, and focused on working-class "cockney school" storylines.
For the 1921 film adaptation see The Jucklins (film)
David Christie Murray was an English journalist, who also wrote fiction.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| People | |
| Other | |
