author
Harold R. (Harold Richard) Vynne
1863–1903
A late-19th-century novelist and guidebook writer, he captured Chicago's bustling theater district, hotels, nightlife, and World’s Fair moment in lively, street-level detail. His surviving work blends practical observation with the flavor of popular fiction from the Gilded Age.
1 Audiobook
Chicago by day and night : the pleasure seeker's guide to the Paris of America
by Harold R. (Harold Richard) Vynne
About the author
Born in 1863 and dying in 1903, Harold Richard Vynne was an English-born writer who became associated with Chicago. Surviving catalog and public-domain records link him to fiction as well as city writing, and he is best remembered today for Chicago by Day and Night, a vivid guide to the city at the time of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition.
That book presents Chicago as a place of hotels, theaters, amusements, and fast-moving urban spectacle, making it interesting not just as a travel guide but as a snapshot of how the city wanted to be seen at the end of the 19th century. Other records also connect him with novels including The Woman That's Good and Love Letters: A Romance in Correspondence.
Reliable biographical detail on Vynne is quite thin, so much of his life remains obscure. Even so, the books that remain show a writer drawn to modern city life, popular entertainment, and the restless energy of turn-of-the-century America.