author
Henry MacMahon
A little-known early 20th-century novelist, he is best remembered for turning major silent-film epics into books. His fiction helped carry the drama of films like Orphans of the Storm and The Ten Commandments onto the printed page.
1 Audiobook
Orphans of the Storm
by Henry MacMahon
About the author
Henry MacMahon was an early 20th-century writer whose surviving reputation rests mainly on novelizations tied to landmark silent films. Records available through Project Gutenberg, the Online Books Page at the University of Pennsylvania, HathiTrust, and major library listings connect him with Orphans of the Storm and The Ten Commandments, and also with The King of Kings.
His work seems to have focused on adapting or extending stories created for the screen, especially large-scale historical and religious dramas associated with filmmakers such as D. W. Griffith and Cecil B. DeMille. That gives his books a special place in film and publishing history: they show how audiences of the 1920s could revisit famous movies in novel form.
Very little biographical information about his personal life was easy to confirm from reliable sources consulted here, so the published works remain the clearest window into his career. For listeners interested in early cinema, popular fiction, or the long history of movie tie-ins, MacMahon is a fascinating figure from a formative moment in mass storytelling.