author
Austin Potter
1842–1913
A Methodist minister with a reformer’s eye, he wrote a vivid temperance novel about how alcohol can unravel a family’s life. His best-known work blends moral purpose with the pace of popular 19th-century fiction.
1 Audiobook
About the author
Born in 1842 and remembered as the Rev. Austin Potter, he was a Methodist minister as well as a writer. The surviving bibliographic record tied to his name is slim, but it clearly connects him to From Wealth to Poverty; Or, the Tricks of the Traffic: A Story of the Drink Curse, published in Montreal and Toronto in 1884.
That novel places him in the world of late-19th-century temperance writing, where fiction was often used to warn readers about the personal and social damage caused by drinking. In Potter’s case, the story follows a family’s decline and struggle, showing how strongly he cared about questions of character, addiction, and reform.
Because so little easily verifiable biographical material survives online, much of his life remains in the background compared with his book. He died in 1913, and today he is chiefly remembered through this one forceful work of moral and social fiction.