author
Ernest McGaffey
b. 1861
A Chicago lawyer and minor American poet, he wrote with a strong feeling for the outdoors, the American West, and the reflective mood of late 19th- and early 20th-century verse.
1 Audiobook
Cosmos
by Ernest McGaffey
About the author
Born in Ohio in 1861, Ernest McGaffey was an American poet and lawyer. Archival notes from the Newberry Library describe him as a minor poet of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and note that, after serving as private secretary to Chicago mayor Carter H. Harrison, he was admitted to the bar and practiced law in Chicago.
McGaffey published a substantial body of verse and nature writing, including Poems, Cosmos, Poems of Gun and Rod, and Outdoors; a Book of the Woods, Fields and Marshlands. His work suggests a writer drawn to open landscapes, hunting and fishing culture, and the emotional pull of wilderness and western settings.
Records connected with his papers show that he was still writing late in life, including letters and poems from 1939. A public-domain author listing also indicates that he died in 1941.