author
D. Howard (David Howard) Gwinn
1857–1938
Best known for a single late-19th-century adventure novel, this little-known American writer left behind a story that blends frontier action, buried treasure, and a lost-world mystery. His work has endured mainly through The Gold of Ophir, a curious mix of romance, biblical legend, and early speculative fiction.
1 Audiobook
The gold of Ophir
by D. Howard (David Howard) Gwinn
About the author
Very little is firmly documented about D. Howard Gwinn beyond the basic outline of his life and his surviving book. Reference sources identify him as David Howard Gwinn, born on September 16, 1857, in Curllsville, Pennsylvania, and dead on November 1, 1938, in Washington state.
He is remembered for The Gold of Ophir (1898), his best-known and apparently only novel. The book combines Western-style adventure with hidden treasure, an underground world, and a theory linking the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel to the Aztecs, giving it an unusual place between popular adventure fiction and early science-fictional fantasy.
Because so little else about his career is widely recorded, Gwinn remains an obscure but intriguing figure. For readers today, his appeal lies in that blend of mystery and rarity: a writer almost lost to history, represented by one imaginative novel that still sparks curiosity.