author
Francis Parsons
1871–1937
A Hartford writer with a strong feel for local history, he turned essays, portraits, and historical studies into lively reading. His work often circles back to Connecticut’s literary past and the people who shaped it.
1 Audiobook
The Friendly Club and Other Portraits
by Francis Parsons
About the author
Born in 1871 and based in Hartford, Connecticut, Francis Parsons was a banker, lawyer, and author. The surviving reference material on him is fairly brief, but it consistently places him in Hartford and shows a career that moved between professional life and literary work.
His best-known book, The Friendly Club and Other Portraits (1922), grew in part from essays first published anonymously in The Hartford Courant. The book reflects his interest in character sketches, literary history, and the older cultural life of New England, especially figures connected with Hartford and Yale.
Other works attributed to him include A History of Banking in Connecticut and Six Men of Yale, which suggest the range of his interests: local institutions, historical memory, and notable people from Connecticut’s past. He died in 1937.