Henry M. Hunt

author

Henry M. Hunt

Best known for a vivid true-crime account of the Patrick Henry Cronin case, this late-19th-century writer brought a reporter’s eye to sensational real events. His surviving bibliography is slim, but it points to an author interested in both practical self-help and headline-making history.

1 Audiobook

The Crime of the Century; Or, The Assassination of Dr. Patrick Henry Cronin

The Crime of the Century; Or, The Assassination of Dr. Patrick Henry Cronin

by Henry M. Hunt

About the author

Henry M. Hunt is a little-documented American author whose known works include The Crime of the Century; or, The Assassination of Dr. Patrick Henry Cronin and Dollars and Sense; or, How to Get On. The title page of The Crime of the Century presents him as "the noted journalist," which suggests a background in reporting even though major biographical details about his life are hard to confirm from standard reference sources.

His best-known book appeared in 1889 and tackles the murder of Dr. Patrick Henry Cronin, one of Chicago's most notorious 19th-century cases. The book's scale and tone suggest a writer working close to the fast-moving world of newspapers, blending investigation, narrative, and public fascination with a major criminal trial.

Because reliable personal information on Hunt is scarce, the picture that survives is mostly through his books rather than through a full life story. Even so, his work offers a useful glimpse of American popular nonfiction in the late 1800s, when journalism, crime writing, and advice literature often overlapped.