Daniel Jackson

Daniel Jackson, Jr. was an American author born in 1790. He is chiefly associated with Alonzo and Melissa; or, The Unfeeling Father, a sentimental romance that circulated widely in the nineteenth century and remained in print through many later editions.

His name is especially interesting because the book’s history became tangled with questions of authorship. Library records for later editions credit Daniel Jackson, Jr., while literary sources also connect the story to Isaac Mitchell and describe Jackson’s version as part of the novel’s unusual publishing history. That makes him a noteworthy figure less for a large body of surviving work than for his place in an early American literary mystery.

Reliable biographical details about his life appear to be scarce in the sources I could confirm, so it is safest to remember him as an early nineteenth-century American writer whose reputation rests mainly on the enduring fame of Alonzo and Melissa.