author
Ignatius Donnelly
1831–1901
A restless 19th-century political thinker and bestselling writer, he moved easily between public office, reform movements, and big, controversial ideas. Today he is remembered both as a leading voice in Minnesota and Populist politics and as the author of books that helped popularize theories about Atlantis and Shakespeare.
3 Audiobooks
Cæsar's Column: A Story of the Twentieth Century
by Ignatius Donnelly
Ragnarok : the Age of Fire and Gravel
by Ignatius Donnelly
Atlantis: The Antedeluvian World
by Ignatius Donnelly
About the author
Born in Philadelphia on November 3, 1831, Ignatius Donnelly trained as a lawyer before moving to Minnesota in the 1850s. He became an important figure in the young state’s politics, serving as lieutenant governor and later representing Minnesota in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Donnelly built a reputation as a gifted orator, reformer, and energetic public thinker. Minnesota Historical Society describes him as one of the best-known Minnesotans of the nineteenth century and a major spokesman for Midwestern Populism, showing how seriously he was taken in political life as well as in print.
He also wrote widely read books that gave him a very different kind of fame. Works such as Atlantis: The Antediluvian World and his writings on the Shakespeare authorship question made him internationally known, though those ideas are now generally treated as fringe or pseudoscientific. He died in Minneapolis on January 1, 1901.