author
Richard Hildreth
1807–1865
Remembered for a sharp, deeply researched history of the early United States, he also brought antislavery ideas into American fiction at an early date. His work mixed journalism, politics, and historical writing in a way that still makes him interesting today.
3 Audiobooks
Hildreth's "Japan as It Was and Is": A Handbook of Old Japan, Volume 1 (of 2)
by Richard Hildreth
Inducements to the Colored People of the United States to Emigrate to British Guiana
by Richard Hildreth, Edward Carbery
Hildreth's "Japan as It Was and Is": A Handbook of Old Japan, Volume 2 (of 2)
by Richard Hildreth
About the author
Born in Deerfield, Massachusetts, in 1807, Richard Hildreth became an American journalist, novelist, and historian. He studied at Harvard, trained in law, and then moved into writing and public debate, where he built a reputation for clear argument and strong political opinions.
He is best known for his six-volume History of the United States of America, a major early national history covering the period from 1497 to 1821. He also wrote The Slave; or, Memoirs of Archy Moore, an early antislavery novel that helped show how fiction could be used to confront slavery in American life.
Hildreth's writing was admired for its detail and seriousness, even by readers who disagreed with his strong Federalist and antislavery views. He died in Florence in 1865, leaving behind work that linked literature, reform, and the writing of American history.