ABSTRACT
John Habberton was born in Brooklyn, New York on February 24, 1842. After the death of his father in 1848, he was taken to Illinois and reared by an uncle. Habberton began to develop an ear for dialect and an eye for colorful detail that would distinguish his humor. The Bible played strongly upon Habberton's imagination, introducing favorite stories that he would rework in his fiction through the mouths of children, rustics, and hypocrites. When he returned to the East at the age of 16 to learn the publishing trade, he fell under the influence of Charles Dickens's work and dashed off sketches of New York in the light style of The Uncommercial Traveler. To his surprise, the pieces were accepted and printed by weekly papers as far away as Boston. The Civil War interrupted his publishing activities but not his writing. He married Alice Lawrence Hastings in 1868, and the couple settled in New Rochelle, New York.
