author
Sir William Francis Butler
1838–1910
An Irish soldier, traveler, and storyteller whose books drew on campaigns from Canada to Africa, he wrote with the eye of an eyewitness and the pace of an adventure writer.
4 Audiobooks
The Great Lone Land A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America
by Sir William Francis Butler
The Wild North Land The Story of a Winter Journey with Dogs across Northern North America
by Sir William Francis Butler
Red Cloud, the Solitary Sioux: A Story of the Great Prairie
by Sir William Francis Butler
Sir Charles Napier
by Sir William Francis Butler
About the author
Born in County Tipperary in 1838, he went on to become a British Army officer and a prolific author. Reliable reference sources describe him as both a soldier and writer, and note that his early memories of the Great Famine helped shape a lasting sympathy for people on the losing side of history.
His military career took him widely across the British Empire. He is especially remembered for his work in Canada during the Red River expedition and for later service in Africa, while his books turned those experiences into vivid travel and military narratives.
He died in 1910. Today he is remembered less as a conventional empire chronicler than as a complicated figure: an adventurous officer, a sharp observer, and a writer whose firsthand accounts gave his history and memoirs unusual life.