author
James Edmund Dunning
1873–1931
An American writer whose surviving work feels both literary and historical, he also led an unusually international life in public service. Alongside fiction such as The Master Builders and the short story The Two Apples, he served as a U.S. consul in Europe in the early 1900s.
1 Audiobook
Atlantic Narratives: Modern Short Stories; Second Series
by Mary Antin, Elizabeth Ashe, Kathleen Carman, Cornelia A. P. (Cornelia Atwood Pratt) Comer, Mazo De la Roche, Annie Hamilton Donnell, James Edmund Dunning, Rebecca Hooper Eastman, William Addleman Ganoe, Lucy Huffaker, Joseph Husband, S. H. Kemper, Christina Krysto, Ellen Mackubin, Edith Ronald Mirrielees, Margaret Prescott Montague, Edward Morlae, Meredith Nicholson, Kathleen Thompson Norris, Laura Spencer Portor, Lucy Pratt, Elsie Singmaster, Charles Haskins Townsend, Edith Wyatt
About the author
Born in 1873 and died in 1931, James Edmund Dunning is remembered as an American author whose known publications include the 1909 novel The Master Builders, the later work The Roman Road to Portslade, and the short story The Two Apples.
Records from the Theodore Roosevelt Center also show that he was active in U.S. diplomatic service, serving as an American consul in Milan and corresponding with officials during Theodore Roosevelt's presidency. That public career gives his writing an added interest: he seems to have moved between literary work and international affairs rather than staying in a purely literary world.
Dunning is not a widely documented figure today, so only a limited biographical sketch can be confirmed from readily available sources. Even so, the mix of fiction, travel or place-based writing, and diplomatic service makes him a distinctive early-20th-century author worth rediscovering.