author
Henry Davenport Northrop
1836–1909
A prolific 19th-century writer and Presbyterian minister, he produced sweeping popular histories, religious books, and collections of curious facts for a wide general audience. His books were built to inform and entertain, reflecting the ambitious, encyclopedic style of American publishing in his era.
2 Audiobooks
New Century Speaker and Writer: Being a Standard Work on Composition and Oratory
by Henry Davenport Northrop
Dwight L. Moody: Hänen elämänsä ja vaikutuksensa
by William R. (William Revell) Moody, Henry Davenport Northrop
About the author
Born in Pulteney, New York, in 1836, Henry Davenport Northrop was an American author and Presbyterian minister who also wrote under the name H. D. Northrop. He studied at Amherst College and pursued theological training before entering the ministry, but he became especially well known for his enormous output as a writer and compiler.
Northrop specialized in large, accessible books that gathered history, biography, religion, travel, science, and oddities into single volumes for family reading. Works associated with him include broad historical surveys such as Our Greater Country and biographical or religious titles like Heroes of History and Their Grand Achievements and Treasures of the Bible. His writing helped bring a wide range of subjects to readers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when subscription publishing and illustrated compendiums were especially popular.
He died in 1909 in Connecticut. Today, he is remembered less as a literary stylist than as an energetic popularizer — a writer who turned big subjects into readable, marketable books for everyday American households.