FRANCIS RICHARD STOCKTON, dean of American humorists of the
Brownstone Age, was descended from an old family that settled in
America in the middle seventeenth century, and one of his ancestors
was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. As a young man m
Philadelphia he worked as wood engraver and invented an engraving
tool. Later in New York he was an editor on The Century Magazine
and for eight years edited St. Nicholas. But most of his writing
life was passed quietly in Nutley, New Jersey, where he dictated
from a hammock.
Stockton was lame and never in good health, but always equable of
temper. A very witty man, with a fund of good stories, he was
excellent company and had many friends. He wrote several children's
books, but the novels that made him famous were Rudder Grange,
about a servant girl on a houseboat, and The Casting Away of Mrs.
Lecks and Mrs. Aleshine, about two widows shipwrecked on an island
in the Pacific. Like so many funny men, Stockton wrote slowly and
painfully, often laboring as long as an hour for the right word.
His humor stemmed from personal individuality and did not depend on
dialect or colloquialism. A story of his, "The Lady or the Tiger?"
caused a sensation when it came out in 1882, and was later made
into a musical comedy. But "The Griffin and the Minor Canon" is
much more typical of his best work.
