Trumps

Curtis (1824-92) was an American writer and public speaker born in Providence, Rhode Island, of New Englander ancestry. He was a Republican and spoke in favour of African-American equality and civil rights. Around 1839 the family moved to New York where Curtis fell under the influence of the Transcendental movement and joined a communal experiment known as Brook Farm from 1842-43. He then spent time in Concord, Mass., to be in the neighbourhood of Emerson before travelling in Europe, Egypt and Syria. He returned in 1850 ambitious for literary distinction, took a post on the New York Tribune and became a popular lecturer and favourite in society. He helped found and was associate editor of Putnam's Magazine and published several volumes of essays written for Putnam's and Harper's Weekly, the best known being Potiphar Papers (1853), a satire on fashionable society and Prue and I (1856), a sentimental and tenderly humorous study of life. The failure of Putnam's left him deeply in debt, and it took him many years to settle this obligation. He was involved in founding the Republican Party and in 1863 became political editor of Harper's Weekly. In 1871 he was appointed to chair the commission on the reform of the civil service, and its report effected important changes to regulate the service. This novel was first published in 1861.