The Library: Author Information

Note: means new to the site for Christmas 2002.

Alcott, Louisa May * Alden, Raymond M. * Alger, Horatio * Allen, Grant * Andersen, Hans Christian * Baum, L. Frank * Bryusov, Valerie * Lewis Carroll * Cather, Willa * Chesterton, G.K. * Crane, Stephen * Davies, W.H. * Dickens, Charles * Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan * Dunbar, Paul Laurence * Edwards, Amelia B. * Field, Eugene * Freeman, Mary E. Wilkins * Frost, Robert * Gaskell, Elizabeth * Good Stories for Great Holidays * Grahame, Kenneth * Hale, Lucretia P. * Hardy, Thomas * Harte, Bret * Hawthorne, Nathaniel * O. Henry * Hill, Richard * Hoffmann, E. T. A. * Irving, Washington * Joyce, James * Kipling, Rudyard * Leacock, Stephen * Moore, Clement C. * The New York Sun * Page, Thomas Nelson * Peattie, Elia W. * Potter, Beatrix * Rossetti, Christina * Runyon, Damon * Saki (H.H. Munro) * Service, Robert * Shakespeare, William * Stevenson, Robert Louis * Stockton, Frank * Van Dyke, Henry * Wiggin, Kate Douglas

Hans Christian Anderson's fairy tales are beautiful, but are written with strong morals and possibly disturbing conclusions, the protagonist usually dying. You might want to pre-read them before telling them to younger children.

Did you think that all Frank Baum ever wrote were Oz books? This prolific writer has tried his hand at many types of children's stories, including these tales of Santa Claus.

Pen name for Charles Dodgson, author of Alice in Wonderland and Alice in the Looking Glass.

Edited by Frances Jenkins Olcott, and including the following Christmas stories:

Pen name of William Sydney Porter; born in North Carolina in 1862. He started writing stories while in prison for embezzlement, (convicted in 1898 - it is uncertain if he actually committed the crime). He started late, but proved a prolific and widely read short story writer in the twelve years he devoted to the craft, and his name has become synonymous with the American short story.
His years in Texas inspired many lively Westerns, but it was New York City that galvanized his creative powers, and his New York stories became his claim to fame. Loved for their ironic plot twists, which made for pleasing surprise endings, his highly entertaining tales appeared weekly in Joseph Pulitzer's New York World.
An extremely private man, made famous by his work, preferred to spend his time and money on drink, died alone and penniless (alcoholism in 1910).
O. Henry's legacy and his popularization of the short story was such that in 1918, Doubleday, in conjunction with the Society of Arts and Sciences, established the O. Henry Awards, an annual anthology of short stories, in his honor.

Hoffmann turned to writing short stories in 1822???, after failing at composing. The literary career of the nutcracker began with the 1816 publication of his fairy tale "Nussknacker und Mausekönig," a children's book that helped bring the nutcracker into a broader popularity. In the spirit of the developing Biedermeier period, a time when the importance of the family and children was beginning to be emphasized, Hoffmann vividly depicted a sympathetic soul: "Under the Christmas tree a very excellent little man became visible that stood there still and modestly. He waited as if they would all come to him." The job of thenutcracker was to work hard for the children of the family by biting open the nuts.

Leacock was the English-speaking world's best-known humorist 1915-25. Leacock's first published humorous work, Literary Lapses (1910), was a huge success. Many of the sketches depict in a "kindly" fashion the incongruencies between the way things are and the way things ought to be.