author
Henry Thayer Niles
1825–1901
Best known for a late-19th-century poetic meditation on Buddha and Christ, this New England-born writer moved between teaching, law, and literature. His life seems to have joined scholarly curiosity with a strong taste for big spiritual and historical themes.
1 Audiobook
The Dawn and the Day; Or, The Buddha and the Christ, Part I
by Henry Thayer Niles
About the author
Born in West Fairlee, Vermont, in 1825, Henry Thayer Niles studied at Dartmouth College and later spent time at Andover Theological Seminary. Sources also describe two years of travel in Europe before he began teaching, a path that helps explain the broad intellectual range in his writing.
Niles went on to teach Greek and English at Urbana College in Ohio, then read law, joined the bar, and practiced in Urbana and later Toledo. He was remembered not only as a lawyer but also as an educator and literary figure, showing an unusually varied career even by 19th-century standards.
His best-known work is The Dawn and the Day; Or, The Buddha and the Christ, Part I, published in 1894. The book reflects his interest in comparing major religious traditions and presents those ideas in an ambitious, poetic style. He died in 1901.