author
Francis A. (Francis Alexander) Durivage
1814–1881
A lively 19th-century American writer, he filled newspapers and magazines with poems, sketches, and short fiction, often under the pen name "Old Un." His work moved easily between humor, storytelling, and translation, making him a familiar voice in popular print culture of his time.
1 Audiobook
The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales
by Francis A. (Francis Alexander) Durivage
About the author
Born in Boston in 1814, Francis Alexander Durivage built a wide-ranging career as an American author and journalist. He became known for contributing poems, humorous pieces, short stories, and sketches to magazines and newspapers, and he often used the pen name Old Un.
Durivage appears to have been a notably versatile writer. In addition to his periodical work, he was connected with translated literature, including a translation of Alphonse de Lamartine's History of the Revolution of 1848 prepared with W. S. Chase. Sources also describe him as an editor and as a writer whose work reached a broad popular audience.
He died in 1881. Although he is not as widely remembered today as some of his contemporaries, the record that survives shows a busy, adaptable literary life shaped by the fast-moving world of 19th-century American print.