author
John Gilmer Speed
1853–1909
A journalist and editor from Kentucky, he wrote with a wide range of interests, from family history and literary biography to horses and military history. His work connects American life, letters, and publishing at the turn of the 20th century.
1 Audiobook
About the author
Born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1853, John Gilmer Speed became known as a journalist, editor, and author whose career moved between newspapers, magazines, and books. Records of his publications show a writer comfortable with many subjects, including biography, history, and practical nonfiction.
He is especially linked with literary and historical works such as The Letters and Poems of John Keats, to which he contributed editorial work and a memoir of Keats, and The Gilmers in America, a family history published in 1897. He also wrote The Horse in America in 1905, a broad survey of horse types and their place in the United States, showing how easily he shifted from literary topics to everyday American interests.
Speed died in 1909. Today, he is remembered less as a single-genre author than as a versatile man of letters whose books reflect the curiosity and range of late 19th- and early 20th-century American publishing.