Background

William Harben was born on July 5, 1858, in Dalton, Georgia, United States, the son of Nathaniel Parks and Myra (Richardson) Harben. His first ancestor came to Virginia from Somersetshire in 1625; another ancestor was a brother of Daniel Boone; and on his mother’s side he was related to the Bowman family of Virginia and Kentucky.

Education

As a child in Dalton William was an indifferent student, more engrossed in writing fiction after the manner of Cooper than in learning to cast accounts.

Career

After school William Harben was a merchant until he was thirty, sometimes in Georgia, sometimes in Tennessee, and always in arrears. In 1888 he determined to try his fortune as a writer, and shortly afterward he moved to New York. The next year he published White Marie, a book which dealt tragically with some of the complexities of life that grew out of the institution of negro slavery. Its reception in the North was mildly gratifying, but for all his claim that the book was not a hostile commentary, people in the South did not take to it or remember him for a while cordially. In seven slight books he published between 1890 and 1901 he kept safely apart from inter-racial subjects; after writing of the discrepancy that sometimes exists between religious profession and performance, he confined himself to stories of detectives, of far-wandering balloons, and of literary life in New York.

During 1891-1893 Harben was assistant editor of the Youth’s Companion. His Northern Georgia Sketches (1900), is made up of ten stories that had already appeared in The Century, Lippincott’s, and other magazines. Here he definitely struck the popular taste. The Harpers now solicited the manuscript “Westerfelt, ” which they had rejected, and, publishing it in 1901, inaugurated the series of novels which he was to write at a rate of slightly more than one a year for the rest of his life, dealing primarily with the land and people of northern Georgia. He knew that region - man and woman, villager and countryman and mountaineer - and he set it forth with sound if not powerful realism, with some humor if without large philosophy, in an extended saga, with Abner Daniel (1902) and Ann Boyd (1906) as its most notable elements.

Except for Mam’ Linda (1907), which deprecates lynching, and The Divine Event (1920), which is laid in New York, all of his novels after 1901 occupy themselves mainly with very much the same setting and the same types of character; indeed, one character may appear in several different books. Many critics consistently applauded this long record, and William Dean Howells, perhaps the most distinguished of them, praised extravagantly its portrayal of women.

Achievements

• William Harben was one of the most popular American authors of the early 20th century. He achieved his greatest literary success with Northern Georgia Sketches (1900), a collection of short stories about Georgia "hillbillies".

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Hills of Refuge

    (Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)

  • Abner Daniel; A Novel

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • Westerfelt

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultura...)

  • Northern Georgia Sketches

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • Mam' Linda; A Novel

    (This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)

  • Ann Boyd; a Novel

    (This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)

  • Pole Baker: A Novel

    (This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)

  • Dixie Hart

    (With Frontispiece)

  • The Desired Woman
  • The Land of the Changing Sun
  • The Inner Law

Personality

Harben once wrote of himself that he was afraid none of his books fairly represented him personally - he had “lived so very, very much and felt so much, and suffered, and enjoyed, and gloated and despaired”; but the photographs of him and the exemplary roster of his dedications to most of his family and to many friends seem to indicate that the turbulence of his spirit was sufficiently well disciplined not to set him beyond the ordinary reach of people’s affection.

Connections

In 1896, Harben was married to Maybelle Chandler of Williamsburg County, South Carolina.

Father:

Nathaniel Parks Harben

Mother:

Myra (Richardson) Harben

Spouse:

Maybelle (Chandler) Harben

Son:

William Chander Harben

Son:

Eric Marion Harben

References

• Will N. Harben (Twayne's United States authors series ; TUSAS 330)
• Who's Who in America Vol. X 1918-1919