Frank H. Stauffer

Frank H. Stauffer, also listed as Francis Henry Stauffer, was an American writer, poet, and journalist who lived from 1832 to 1895. He is known today mainly for The Queer, the Quaint and the Quizzical: A Cabinet for the Curious, a lively collection of literary curiosities and oddities, and for the poetry volume Toward Sunset, and Other Poems.

Local historical sources from Berwyn, Pennsylvania, describe him as a writer and journalist and place him among the people who helped shape the village in the late nineteenth century. That fits well with the range of his surviving work, which shows both a newspaperman’s eye for interesting details and a compiler’s delight in the strange and memorable.

Much of his appeal now comes from that sense of curiosity. His books preserve the small wonders, eccentric facts, and forgotten corners of print culture that fascinated readers of his day, and they still make him an engaging figure for anyone who enjoys literary history.