Benjamin Ellis Martin

Benjamin Ellis Martin was an American author active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The records found for his books identify him as the author of In the Footprints of Charles Lamb (1890), Old Chelsea, a Summer-Day's Stroll, and, with Charlotte M. Martin, The Stones of Paris in History and Letters and The New York Press and Its Makers in the Eighteenth Century.

His writing has a strong sense of place. In the preface to In the Footprints of Charles Lamb, he explains that he wanted to follow Lamb through the actual streets and houses of London, preserving the feel of the places connected with the writer's life. That helps explain Martin's appeal: he did not treat literature as something sealed off on the page, but as something rooted in neighborhoods, buildings, and everyday city life.

Reliable biographical detail beyond his dates is scarce in the sources reviewed here, so it is safest to remember him chiefly through his books: works of literary exploration that guide readers through Chelsea, Paris, New York, and the remembered landscapes of Charles Lamb.