author
Charles A. Gunnison
1861–1897
A San Francisco writer with a short, adventurous life, he left behind travel sketches, journals, and fiction that often reached beyond California to places like Macao and Japan. His work feels curious, mobile, and shaped by late-19th-century travel.
3 Audiobooks
In Macao
by Charles A. Gunnison
The Beautiful Eyes of Ysidria
by Charles A. Gunnison
A Napa Christchild; and Benicia's Letters
by Charles A. Gunnison
About the author
Born in San Francisco in 1861, Charles A. Gunnison was an American writer whose published works include In Macao, The Beautiful Eyes of Ysidria, A Napa Christchild; and Benicia's Letters, and The Butler's Story.
Library and archival records suggest that writing was only part of his creative life. Stanford describes his journals from 1881 to 1887 as diaries of an author and poet that record daily life in San Francisco, friendships, and travels in Europe and Asia, while California archival material also notes sketchbooks and travel drawings connected with a cross-country journey and later travel abroad.
He died in San Francisco in 1897 at just 36 years old. Although he is not widely known today, the surviving fiction, journals, and sketches point to a lively literary voice shaped by travel, observation, and the cultural world of the American West in the 1880s and 1890s.