Albert Payson Terhune

Born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1872, Albert Payson Terhune grew up in a literary family and later graduated from Columbia University. He worked as a journalist for the New York Evening World, but he became far more widely known as a novelist and short-story writer.

Terhune found his lasting audience through stories about dogs, especially collies. His best-known book, Lad: A Dog (1919), helped make him famous, and many of his later books returned to the dogs and daily life at Sunnybank, his New Jersey home and kennel.

That close connection to real animals gave his fiction much of its charm. Alongside his writing, he bred rough collies, and his name became strongly linked with classic American dog literature.