Albert Payson Terhune is primarily remembered for his novels, stories, and essays about dogs, usually collies. For more than three decades his tales of dogs found enormous favor in America and England, and Terhune's work was seldom absent from lists of best-sellers or pages of major magazines. Although he claimed that his books on dogs were not written for young readers, the majority of his audience was children, who kept his books in print for more than fifty years. As recently as 1969, eighteen of Terhune's books on dogs were still in print. Today only Lad: A Dog (1919), his first book on dogs, and Lad of Sunnybank (1929) remain in print.

Terhune was born in Newark, New Jersey, the second son and youngest of six children of the Reverend Dr. Edward Payson Terhune and Mary Virginia Hawes Terhune, who wrote under the pseudonym Marion Harland and was influential in her...