author
H. M. (Henry Marie) Brackenridge
1786–1871
A sharp-eyed observer of early America, he turned frontier journeys and political adventures into lively books about the young republic and its expanding borders. His career carried him through law, diplomacy, public office, and travel across places that were changing fast.
2 Audiobooks
Mexican letters written during the progress of the late war between the United States and Mexico, no. 1.
by H. M. (Henry Marie) Brackenridge
Brackenridge's Journal of a voyage up the river Missouri, 1811; Franchère's Voyage to Northwest Coast, 1811-1814
by H. M. (Henry Marie) Brackenridge, Gabriel Franchère
About the author
Born in Pittsburgh in 1786, Henry Marie Brackenridge was the son of writer and judge Hugh Henry Brackenridge. He studied law, was admitted to the bar while still young, and went on to build a wide-ranging career as a lawyer, judge, diplomat, public official, and member of Congress.
Brackenridge is especially remembered as a writer who drew on firsthand experience. His travels in Louisiana, the Mississippi Valley, Florida, and South America gave him material for books that described frontier life, politics, and everyday manners with clarity and humor. Those works now offer readers a vivid window into the early nineteenth-century United States and its borderlands.
His life moved through many corners of public service, but his writing remains one of the most approachable ways to meet him. It combines the curiosity of a traveler with the practical eye of a lawyer and politician, making his work especially appealing to listeners interested in early American history.