WARNER, CHARLES DUDLEY Ameri can essayist and novelist, was born of Puritan ancestry, in Plain field (Mass.), Sept. 12, 182g. His childhood experiences in Charlemont (Mass.), after the death of his father, are pictured in his delightful study Being a Boy (1877). The family removed thence to Cazenovia (N.Y.) ; and Warner graduated in 1851 from Hamilton college, Clinton (N.Y.), through which he had paid his way by his earnings. Because of ill health, he spent some time with a surveying party in Missouri.
When he was 4o years old a series of sketches published in the Courant changed him from an editor with a local reputation to a nationally known man of letters. They were published in book form as My Summer in a Garden (1870). Thereafter Warner's work appeared frequently in the better class magazines. He travelled widely, and wrote several travel books, the best of which are My Winter on the Nile (1876), originally called Mummies and Moslems, and its sequel In the Levant (1876). With his
friend and neighbour, Mark Twain, he collaborated on The Gilded Age (1873), an uneven novel which was unsatisfactory to both men. Another story, Their Pilgrimage (1886), had as its purpose the description of fashionable American resorts; and the making, fraudulent diversion from its intended object, and final loss of a great fortune were treated in an ambitious trilogy, A Little Journey in the World (1889), The Golden House (1894) and That Fortune (i899). Warner is at his best, however, as an essay ist. He also edited the "American Men of Letters" series, which he opened with a biography of Washington Irving (1881). He died in Hartford Oct. 2o, 1900.
See the biographical sketch by T. R. Lounsbury in the Complete Writings of Charles Dudley Warner (1904) and Annie Fields's Charles Dudley Warner (59o4).