author

Robert Bloomer Hare Bell

b. 1872

A Canadian-born Episcopal minister, social reformer, and storyteller, he brought a warm moral imagination to both his public life and his fiction. His best-known work, The Laughing Bear and Other Stories, mixes fantasy, folklore, and gentle lessons in a way that still feels distinctive.

1 Audiobook

The Laughing Bear, and Other Stories

The Laughing Bear, and Other Stories

by Robert Bloomer Hare Bell

About the author

Born in Ottawa on April 2, 1872, Robert Bloomer Hare Bell later worked as an Episcopal minister in the United States. Sources connected with his public-domain recordings describe him as serving in Seattle, Omaha, and Des Moines, while library records confirm his long-form religious writing as well as his fiction.

Bell wrote across genres. The Library of Congress lists The Laughing Bear and Other Stories as a 1917 collection, and HathiTrust records The Life Abundant; a Manual of Living in a revised 1928 edition, showing the range of his work from imaginative tales to practical religious reflection.

He is also remembered as a social activist, with library-style biographical notes crediting him with work on parole reform and support enforcement for children born outside marriage. Bell died in Los Angeles County, California, on November 14, 1956.