(Washington, D.C. – Abraham Lincoln is President. The Coun...)
Washington, D.C. – Abraham Lincoln is President. The Country is at war – Civil War. What was it like to be there? All this is told by a personal friend of Lincoln.
The goings-on of Washington at that time are presented with intimacy and familiarity that only an insider could provide. Quite a provocative glimpse of the political history of the time.
Noah Brooks was an American author, journalist, and editor. He is remembered as a writer of juvenile historical fiction, but his capabilities were more diverse. Drawing on his upbringing in Maine, Brooks enjoyed writing tales of seafaring.
Background
Noah Brooks was born on October 24, 1830, in Castine, Maine, United States. He was the son of Barker and Margaret Brooks. His early childhood was comfortable, growing up as the son of a prosperous shipbuilder in the coastal village of Castine, Maine. When Brooks was seven, however, his parents died and his older sisters cared for him.
Education
Noah Brooks attended public and private schooling in Maine, United States. From 1847 to 1950 he studied art in Boston, Massachusetts, United States.
Career
While still an art student, Noah Brooks had begun publishing articles and short fiction pieces in local newspapers, including the satirical start-up Carpet-Bag. Encouraged by the publishing of his stories and humorous poetry, he opted for a literary career. Brooks left Boston for the Kansas Territory, and then to California, where he settled in the mid-1850s.
In California, Brooks joined writer Bret Harte’s new literary magazine, the Overland Monthly, as an assistant editor. After his wife and infant daughter died around 1862, with the United States Civil War in progress, he took a job with the Sacramento Union as a special correspondent from Washington, District of Columbia. This location allowed Brooks to rekindle an important acquaintance with President Abraham Lincoln, whom he had met traveling westward.
Brooks moved to New York in 1871 and worked for the New York Tribune (1871 - 1876), New York Times (1876-1884), and Newark Daily Advertiser (1884-1892). Before leaving the New York area, however, he began publishing his first fiction since his Carpet-Bag days. Brooks, returning to short fiction, sold many of his new stories to Scribner’s Monthly, then an influential, New York-based literary journal, where in 1872 "The Cruise of the Balboa" and "The Waif of Nautilus Island" inaugurated a long series of sea-related tales. In 1873 Scribners invited Brooks to contribute a tale to the first issue of its newest publication, St. Nicholas. a youth-oriented monthly. Brooks submitted the semi-autobiographical "By the Sea."
Brooks's adventure stories were extremely popular. His characters were believable, his settings detailed. Most importantly, his stories simply entertained. Unlike much of the youth-market literature of the time, they were not preachy. His topics enticed his young, largely male, readership. Among his most successful subjects was baseball, upon which he based The Fairport Nine and Our Base Ball Club and How It Won the Championship. Both novels were first published in serialized form.
Brooks rarely strayed from the events of his own life. He drew from his experiences as a settler in Kansas, for example, in The Boy Emigrants and The Boy Settlers, and his knowledge of the president in the Lincoln biography. Although he took a different approach with The Story of Marco Polo ultimately the book was a success. Brooks became ill as the nineteenth century closed, and moved to Pasadena, California, hoping to regain his health.