Lucius M. (Lucius Manlius) Sargent

Born in Boston in 1786, Lucius Manlius Sargent came from a prominent New England family and studied at Phillips Exeter Academy before attending Harvard. He left college without taking a degree, but went on to build a career as a writer, editor, and public voice in nineteenth-century Boston.

Sargent is remembered as an author, antiquarian, and especially a passionate advocate of temperance. He also wrote in support of the abolition of slavery and became known for his reform-minded prose. His published work included fiction and moral tales as well as historical and social writing, showing both a literary bent and a strong sense of public purpose.

He died in 1867. Though not widely read today, he remains an interesting figure in American literary history for the way he linked authorship with activism and for the forceful personality that contemporaries clearly noticed.