author
Charles C. (Charles Carroll) Bombaugh
1828–1906
A physician, Civil War surgeon, editor, and literary compiler, he is best remembered for turning wide reading into books full of curious facts, quotations, and odd corners of language. His work has a lively, browsing quality that still appeals to readers who enjoy literary miscellanies.
1 Audiobook
The literature of kissing : gleaned from history, poetry, fiction, and anecdote
by Charles C. (Charles Carroll) Bombaugh
About the author
Born in 1828 and dead in 1906, he built an unusual career that joined medicine and literature. Sources available here describe him as a medical surgeon as well as an editor and author, and they connect him with the 69th Pennsylvania during the Civil War, where he served as a surgeon before leaving the role because of poor health.
He is chiefly remembered for gathering and organizing curious material from many places into entertaining reference-style books. Among the works attributed to him in the sources found here are Gleanings from the Harvest-Fields of Literature, Oddities and Curiosities of Words and Literature, and The Literature of Kissing. These books suggest the kind of writer he was: less a novelist than a lively collector of anecdotes, quotations, wordplay, and cultural history.
That mix of scholarship and amusement helps explain why his books have stayed visible in digital libraries and public-domain archives. Even now, he stands out as a nineteenth-century compiler who knew how to make learning feel like pleasurable wandering.