author
Osmond Tiffany
b. 1823
A Baltimore merchant turned occasional man of letters, he wrote vivid books on China, American history, and religion in the mid-1800s. His work ranges from travel writing to historical fiction, giving modern readers a lively glimpse of the subjects that captured nineteenth-century curiosity.
1 Audiobook
About the author
Born in 1823 and later identified with Baltimore, Osmond Tiffany was an American author whose books moved easily between travel, history, and devotional subjects. Reliable catalog and reference records connect him with works including The Canton Chinese; or, The American's Sojourn in the Celestial Empire, the historical novel Brandon; or, A Hundred Years Ago, and Sacred Biography and History.
A surviving 1855 letter from Herman Melville shows Tiffany actively seeking help placing his fiction with publishers, which suggests he was part of the wider literary world even if he never became a household name. Later reference notes also describe him as a Baltimore merchant and an occasional contributor to magazines such as The Atlantic Monthly and The Knickerbocker.
He died in 1895. Today, Tiffany is best remembered through the variety of his nineteenth-century books, which reflect a restless interest in faraway places, early American life, and popular religious history.