author
Francis Speir
1856–1925
Best remembered for the 1912 collection In Colima, and Other Poems, this American writer moved between literature, science, and law. His published work suggests a curious, wide-ranging mind with interests that reached beyond poetry alone.
1 Audiobook
Palæontological Report of the Princeton Scientific Expedition of 1877
by Henry Fairfield Osborn, William Berryman Scott, Francis Speir
About the author
Born in 1856 and dying in 1925, Francis Speir Jr. was an American author whose surviving public record points to a varied intellectual life. Library and reference listings connect him with Princeton University and Columbia Law School, and he is also identified as a lawyer from New York City.
Speir is most closely associated today with In Colima, and Other Poems (1912), a slim poetry collection that remains available in digitized form. He also published prose, including the 1888 essay "The Antechamber of Consciousness" in Popular Science Monthly, which hints at an interest in psychology and scientific thought as well as literature.
Although he is not a widely known literary figure now, the pieces that remain show a writer who worked across genres and followed his curiosity wherever it led. That mix of poetry, reflective prose, and professional life makes him an intriguing rediscovery for listeners interested in overlooked American authors of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.