Henry W. (Henry Walsworth) Kinney

Born in Wailuku, Maui, in 1879, Henry Walsworth Kinney was an American writer and newspaperman whose career stretched far beyond Hawaii. Contemporary and library records connect him with early reporting in Honolulu, editorship of the Hilo Tribune, and later work that carried him into international journalism and commentary.

Kinney wrote across several genres. Project Gutenberg lists him as the author of Broken Butterflies, while library catalogs also credit him with The Island of Hawaii (1913) and later nonfiction books on Manchuria, including Modern Manchuria and the South Manchuria Railway Company and Manchuria Today. Articles published under his name in The Atlantic show that he also wrote for a broader magazine audience, including pieces on Japan and the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake.

Taken together, those works suggest a writer drawn to places in transition and to encounters between cultures. His books and articles move from Hawaiian settings to East Asia, giving his work an unusual geographic range for an early 20th-century American author.