author
Henry Morford
1823–1881
A 19th-century newspaperman and novelist, this versatile writer moved easily between poetry, travel writing, theater, and popular fiction. His work captured both small-town New Jersey roots and the fast-moving world of Civil War-era America.
3 Audiobooks
Shoulder-Straps: A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862
by Henry Morford
Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac
by Henry Morford, William H. Armstrong, Jacob G. Frick
The Coward: A Novel of Society and the Field in 1863
by Henry Morford
About the author
Born in New Monmouth, New Jersey, in 1823, Henry Morford began writing young while working in business and serving as a local postmaster. Poems appeared in periodicals before he moved into journalism and editing, and he later worked for New York newspapers, including the New York Atlas.
Morford wrote across an unusually wide range of forms: poetry, novels, plays, travel books, and newspaper writing. He was especially known in his day for Civil War fiction and travel literature, and his books include The Rest of Don Juan, Rhymes of Twenty Years, Shoulder-Straps, The Days of Shoddy, and John Jasper's Secret, a continuation inspired by Dickens's unfinished The Mystery of Edwin Drood.
He died in 1881, but his writing still offers a lively glimpse of 19th-century literary culture. For listeners interested in forgotten American authors, Morford stands out as a hardworking, wide-ranging man of letters who wrote for both local memory and a broad popular audience.