Posts Tagged ‘Nonfiction’
Gould, John W.
by Peter H. McCracken (2000) GOULD, JOHN W. (1814-1838). John W. Gould was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, the seventh son of an influential judge and educator James Gould. He was christened “John Gould” but added the middle initial “W.” in 1835 to avoid confusion. Gould’s health was always poor; he sailed from New York in…
Read MoreFuller, Margaret
by Robert Beasecker (2000) FULLER, [SARAH] MARGARET (1810-1850). Born in Cambridgeport, Massachusetts, Margaret Fuller was the eldest of nine children. Her father, a lawyer and congressman, educated her at home, and under his demanding regimen she developed her remarkable intellectual gifts. She later taught school in Boston, where she met Ralph Waldo Emerson and entered…
Read MoreEllsberg, Edward
by Robert Shenk (2000) ELLSBERG, EDWARD (1891-1983). Edward Ellsberg was a naval officer, diver, expert in ship salvage, and captivating storyteller. Graduating from the Naval Academy in 1914, Ellsberg served as a naval officer until 1926, when he went into the naval reserve and became chief engineer for Tide Water Oil. Before becoming a civilian,…
Read MoreEllms, Charles
by Boyd Childress (2000) ELLMS, CHARLES (1805-1851). The elusive Charles Ellms was a Boston stationer who, after 1830, turned to popular writing and compiling almanacs. Little is known of Ellms, his birth, education, or even his death. Before he turned to writing a series of books on pirates and shipwrecks, Ellms operated a stationery business,…
Read MoreEllis, Edward Sylvester
by Donald P. Curtis (2000) ELLIS, EDWARD SYLVESTER (1840-1916). A prolific, versatile author, Edward Sylvester Ellis was born in Geneva, Ohio, near Lake Erie. While young, he moved to New Jersey, only later to return to the Great Lakes in his writing. Ellis wrote during stints as a schoolmaster, school superintendent, and editor. He became…
Read MoreEiseley, Loren
by William A. Sullivan (2000) EISELEY, LOREN C[OREY]. (1907-1977). Loren C. Eiseley, anthropologist, educator, and author, was born in Lincoln, Nebraska. He collected fossils as a child and began speculating on the evolution of humankind and the universe. His early books, The Immense Journey (1957) and Darwin’s Century: Evolution and the Men Who Discovered It…
Read MoreEarle, Sylvia
by Barbara Krystal (2020) EARLE, SYLVIA ALICE. (1935- ). Marine biologist, ocean conservationist, underwater explorer, and author Sylvia Earle wrote in The World is Blue: How Our Fate and the Ocean’s Are One (2009): “Even if you never have the chance to see or touch the ocean, the ocean touches you with every breath you take,…
Read MoreDoner, Mary Frances
by Mary DeJong Obuchowski (2000) DONER, MARY FRANCES (1893-1985). Mary Frances Doner set many of her books near her birthplace, Port Huron, Michigan. She supplied around 250 short stories for pulp magazines early in her career and in the 1930s began producing novels and nonfiction, over twenty-eight books altogether. Her Great Lakes novels include Fool’s…
Read MoreCurwood, James Oliver
by Ed Demerly (2000) CURWOOD, JAMES OLIVER (1878-1927). James Oliver Curwood, born in Owosso, Michigan, was a popular writer of nonfiction, romance and adventure fiction, and scripts for silent films. Although much of his fiction is set in the Canadian wilderness, his important early work is focused on Great Lakes freighters. While working as a…
Read MoreCooper, James Fenimore
by Thomas Philbrick (2000) COOPER, JAMES FENIMORE (1789-1851). With The Pilot (1824) James Fenimore Cooper invented the sea novel, for the first time employing the dominant literary form of the nineteenth century as the vehicle for a fiction in which the sea and the ship provide the principal settings, and seamen become the chief characters. In…
Read MoreConnell, Evan S., Jr.
by Jeffrey Cass (2000) CONNELL, EVAN S[HELBY]., JR (1924-2013). Born in Kansas City and educated at Dartmouth, Columbia, and Stanford, Evan S. Connell Jr. remains best known for his novels Mrs. Bridge (1959) and Mr. Bridge (1969). Connell wrote the screenplay of the 1990 film adaptation that combined these two titles; it was directed by James Ivory and starred…
Read MoreColcord, Lincoln Ross
by Parker Bishop Albee Jr. (2000) COLCORD, LINCOLN ROSS (1883-1947). Lincoln Ross Colcord, author of sea fiction and maritime historian, was born at sea aboard the bark Charlotte A. Littlefield, commanded by his father, Lincoln Alden Colcord of Searsport, Maine. Colcord spent much of his first fourteen years aboard deepwater vessels, an experience that instilled in…
Read MoreCodman, John (“Captain Ringbolt”)
by Lisa Franchetti (2000) [CODMAN, JOHN], “CAPTAIN RINGBOLT” (1814-1900). John Codman, a well-traveled sea captain and writer, was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts, in 1814. A pastor’s son, he enjoyed listening to lengthy theological discussions with visiting clergymen, but he realized that, like his maternal grandfather, the sea was his true calling. After two years at…
Read MoreCatherwood, Mary Hartwell
by Kenneth A. Robb (2000) CATHERWOOD, MARY HARTWELL (1847-1902). Mary Hartwell Catherwood began her career with realistic stories of the midwest frontier but focused on stories of the French in early America after her novel The Romance of Dollard (1888). This interest merged with her love for Mackinac Island, where she spent her summers from 1892 to…
Read MoreCarlisle, Henry Coffin
by Dennis Berthold (2000) CARLISLE, HENRY COFFIN (1926-2011). Born in San Francisco, Henry Coffin Carlisle served in the U.S. Naval Reserve from 1944 to 1946, earned a B.A. and M.A. at Stanford University in 1950 and 1953, and entered the book trade as an editor in New York City. He now lives in San Francisco…
Read MoreBrady, Cyrus Townsend
by C. Herbert Gilliland (2000) BRADY, CYRUS [TOWNSEND] (1861-1920). Author of some seventy volumes of fiction and nonfiction, some having to do with seagoing or naval heroes, Cyrus Brady was born 20 December 1861 in Allegheny, Pennsylvania. Graduating from the U.S. Naval Academy in June 1883, he resigned from the navy that October. Employed by…
Read MoreBrackenridge, Henry Marie
by Philip Barnard (2000) BRACKENRIDGE, HENRY MARIE (1786-1871). Henry Marie Brackenridge, writer, lawyer, legislator, and diplomat, was born in Pittsburgh, the son of well-known writer and jurist Hugh Henry Brackenridge. Most of Brackenridge’s career was devoted to legal work and wide-ranging writings on US. political, territorial, and economic expansion into the trans-Appalachian South and West.…
Read MoreBowditch, Nathaniel
by Daniel Finamore (2000) BOWDITCH, NATHANIEL (1773-1838). Mathematician, navigator, and astronomer, Nathaniel Bowditch authored the book that since 1802 has been the standard reference for celestial navigators worldwide. Schooled only to age ten, Bowditch taught himself mathematics and several foreign languages in the course of his academic pursuits. While on a voyage to Manila in…
Read MoreBeebe, William
by R. D. Madison (2000) BEEBE, WILLIAM [CHARLES] (1877-1962). William Beebe was born in Brooklyn and attended Columbia University, where he earned his B.S. in 1898. He led more than sixty scientific expeditions, many of them intentionally maritime. Influenced especially by the writings of Jules Verne, Rudyard Kipling, and H. G. Wells, he participated in…
Read MoreBeach, Edward Latimer Jr.
by Robert Shenk (2000) BEACH, EDWARD LATIMER [JR] (1918-2002). As his father had done, Edward L. Beach [Jr.] spent a career as a naval officer and wrote many books on naval topics. Three of these are excellent novels about submarines. Beach graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy and then entered submarine school in New London,…
Read MoreBarth, John
by Julius Rowan Raper (2000) BARTH, JOHN [SUMMONS] (1930- ). There is a great deal of water in the fiction of John Barth, as one would expect of a writer who was born in Cambridge on the eastern shore of Maryland, was educated at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and lived and taught on the…
Read MoreBaldwin, Bates (John Edward Jennings, Jr.)
Ames, Nathaniel
by Hugh Egan (2000) AMES, NATHANIEL (1805-1835). Son of the Federalist statesman Fisher Ames and grandson of a famous colonial almanac publisher, Nathaniel Ames was a blueblood who went to sea and later wrote about it. In this way he served as a literary forerunner of Richard Henry Dana Jr., Herman Melville and others. Like…
Read MoreAiken, Conrad
by John T. Shawcross (2000) [AIKEN, CONRAD POTTER], “SAMUEL JEAKE JR.” (1889-1973). A friend and contemporary of T. S. Eliot, Conrad Aiken divided his time between England and the United States before settling in Massachusetts in 1947. He used the pen name “Samuel Jeake Jr.” during 1934-1936 as the London correspondent for the New Yorker, although…
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