Edward Wilkin Perry

Edward Wilkin Perry was an early 20th-century writer whose surviving record today is mostly tied to his books rather than to a well-documented personal biography. Catalog and library sources consistently connect him with works including Rubber, the Handmaid of Civilization and Bananas: Nature's Institution for the Promotion of Laziness, along with Bananas; the Golden Treasure of the Tropics.

Those titles suggest the kind of author he was: a popularizer who wrote about tropical products for general readers, using brisk, accessible prose and attention-grabbing titles. Rubber, the Handmaid of Civilization was published in 1903, and available records also associate that book with the Boston Tropical Company.

Because reliable biographical details about his life are scarce in the sources I found, it is safest to remember him through his writing itself: short, energetic books that reflect an era fascinated by trade, industry, and the commercial promise of the tropics.