Background
He was born at New Brunswick, New Jersey. He was the son of William Henry and Sarah Ann (Blakeney) Fiske, the brother of Haley Fiske, and a descendant of William Fiske, who came to Salem, Massachussets, before 1637.
He was born at New Brunswick, New Jersey. He was the son of William Henry and Sarah Ann (Blakeney) Fiske, the brother of Haley Fiske, and a descendant of William Fiske, who came to Salem, Massachussets, before 1637.
He entered Rutgers College in 1858 but upon the appearance, some two years later, of the opening chapters of a novel satirizing the professors and their methods, he was duly asked to resign.
Upon leaving college he went to New York where he became connected with the New York Herald which he served as editorial writer, special correspondent, and war correspondent during the Civil War.
Before he was twelve he was being paid for his newspaper contributions and at fourteen he was editing a small paper. As the Herald's special correspondent, he accompanied the Japanese princes, the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII), and President Lincoln on tours of the United States.
Although many stories are told of the ingenuity exercised by newspapermen in attempting to file dispatches ahead of those of rival correspondents, one of the best of these records how Fiske telegraphed passages from the Bible from Niagara Falls to New York to hold the wires from competitors.
He was recalled from the seat of war to become dramatic critic of the Herald in 1862. He continued as critic until 1866 when he sailed for England on the yacht Henrietta in the first Atlantic yacht race.
Fiske's rapidly moving career next took him to Italy where he was with Garibaldi at Rome during the revolution, and thence to London where he became manager of St. James's Theatre and the Royal English Opera Company, and engaged in several journalistic projects.
In 1873 he produced at St. James's a version of Sardou's play, Rabagas, written by himself, with Charles Wyndham playing the title-role. Upon his return to the United States, he took over the management of the Fifth Avenue Theatre, New York, October 15, 1877, succeeding Augustin Daly. There Mary Anderson and Madame Modjeska made their New York debuts, the former on November 12, 1877.
Edwin Booth and Joseph Jefferson played under his management in 1878.
His better known plays included: Corporal Cartouche; Martin Chuzzlewit (adapted from Dickens's novel); My Noble Son-in-law; and Robert Rabagas. He was also a writer of sketches and stories some of which he published, as English Photographs, by an American (London, 1869); Off-hand Portraits of Prominent New Yorkers (1884); Holiday Stories (1891); and Paddy from Cork, and Other Stories (1891).
Husband of Mary Hewins Fox Fiske. Married 1877.