Henry Harland
1861–1905
Biography
Henry Harland was an American novelist and magazine editor who spent much of his working life in London. He was born in Norwich, Connecticut, in 1861 and grew up in New York, where his family lived in a part of the city with a large German Jewish population. In the 1880s he wrote a run of sensational novels under the pen name Sidney Luska. They were among the first popular books in English to portray Jewish American life, and they drew sharp criticism from Jewish reviewers, who objected to their condescending view of their subjects.
In 1889 Harland moved to London, began publishing under his own name and was drawn into the Aesthetic movement. In 1894 he became the founding editor of The Yellow Book, an illustrated quarterly, and he served as its literary editor for the whole of its thirteen volumes; he also contributed many pieces under pseudonyms. His story collections from this period won praise from critics but sold only modestly. He reached a wide readership with The Cardinal's Snuff-Box (1900), followed by The Lady Paramount and My Friend Prospero. He died in 1905 at Sanremo in Italy after a long struggle with tuberculosis, and his widow completed his unfinished last novel, The Royal End.
The Cardinal's Snuff-Box, the book on this site, is the novel that first brought Harland a broad public. It was written after his move to London, when he was publishing under his own name rather than under the pseudonym of his earlier and more sensational novels. It marks the change in his career, from the popular fiction of New York in the 1880s to the more polished work of his years in England.
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Books
The Cardinal's snuff-box
by Henry Harland
Henry Harland's 1900 romance, set in the hills of northern Italy. A young man named Peter, idling on a bench by a stream, is spoken to by a lady in the grounds of the neighbouring villa, and a story of love, secrets and a cardinal's snuff-box begins. Light, witty and decorative…
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.