author
H. C. (Hobart Chatfield) Chatfield-Taylor
1865–1945
A Chicago-born novelist, biographer, and man of letters, he moved easily between American high society and the literary worlds of France and Italy. He was especially admired for his deeply researched books on Molière and Carlo Goldoni, which helped make him known as an authority on European drama.
1 Audiobook
With Edge Tools
by H. C. (Hobart Chatfield) Chatfield-Taylor
About the author
Born in Chicago on March 24, 1865, Hobart Chatfield-Taylor grew up in a wealthy family, studied in the United States and Europe, and graduated from Cornell University in 1886. He went on to build a varied literary career as a novelist, biographer, memoirist, and cultural figure, publishing both fiction and nonfiction over several decades.
He is best remembered for his biographies of Molière and Carlo Goldoni, works that earned him a reputation for serious scholarship as well as readable style. Alongside those studies, he wrote novels, travel and memoir writing, and books connected with Chicago society and city life, showing a talent for turning observation and research into lively prose.
Chatfield-Taylor died on January 17, 1945. Today he stands out as a writer who linked Gilded Age and early twentieth-century American literary culture with a lasting interest in European theater, biography, and the social world he knew so well.