John Prosper Carmel

Very little biographical information about John Prosper Carmel is easy to confirm from reliable online sources. He is clearly credited as the author of Blottentots and How to Make Them, a humorous work preserved by Project Gutenberg.

Because so few trustworthy details about his life are readily available, he remains a fairly obscure figure. What survives most clearly is the tone of his writing: light, imaginative, and cheerfully eccentric.

For readers, that mystery can be part of the appeal. Carmel is one of those authors known less through a well-documented life story than through a single quirky book that has managed to outlast its era.