author

Harriet Pearl Skinner

Best remembered for writing lively, moral-centered books for young readers, this early 20th-century author also published devotional poetry and songs. Her work moves between storytelling, faith, and the hope of shaping character through reading.

1 Audiobook

Boys Who Became Famous Men

Boys Who Became Famous Men

by Harriet Pearl Skinner

About the author

Harriet Pearl Skinner, also published as Harriet Pearl Skinner McRoberts, was an American author active in the early 1900s. Project Gutenberg lists her under Skinner and notes McRoberts as an alias, while other library records connect her name to later books of poetry and songs.

Her best-known prose work appears to be Boys Who Became Famous Men (1905), a collection of stories about the childhood of poets, artists, and musicians. Records from Project Gutenberg and other library catalogs also show her as the author of Every Christian and A Christian Crieth Unto Israel, both published in 1921, suggesting a later turn toward openly devotional writing.

Available memorial records identify her as Harriet Pearl Skinner McRoberts, born in 1874 and deceased on January 21, 1946. Detailed biographical information is limited in the sources found, but the surviving books suggest a writer interested in moral education, religious feeling, and making big lives and big ideas approachable for general readers.