W. H. (Walter Henry) Howe

Born in 1848, Walter Henry Howe was an American editor and compiler whose surviving record today is tied mainly to the books he assembled rather than to a widely documented public life. Library and public-domain catalog records identify him as the editor or author of works including Here Lies, a collection of humorous and curious tombstone inscriptions, and Irish Wit and Humor.

Howe seems to have specialized in gathering lively material from many sources and reshaping it for general readers. That kind of work was especially popular in the late 1800s and early 1900s, when themed collections of jokes, sayings, quotations, and literary curiosities were a familiar part of everyday reading.

Detailed biographical information about him is hard to confirm from the sources available here, so the safest picture is of a writer-editor remembered for preserving comic oddities and popular humor in book form.