R. L. (Richard Lynch) Garner

Born in Abingdon, Virginia, in 1848, Richard Lynch Garner became best known for his experiments and writing about the speech and behavior of apes and monkeys. He traveled to Central Africa, especially Gabon, and his work made him a distinctive public figure in the era's popular science writing.

Garner wrote books including Apes and Monkeys: Their Life and Language, presenting his efforts to study animal sounds and communication. While some of his ideas are now dated, his work reflects an early and ambitious attempt to observe primates closely and explain their behavior to general readers.

He died in 1920. Today, he is remembered less as a conventional novelist than as an adventurous author whose travel, observation, and speculation helped shape popular interest in primates and animal language.