As editor of the New York Sun for almost three decades in the post-Civil War era, Charles A. Dana built that newspaper into one of the most important of its time. He was the central figure responsible for the Sun's developing a national reputation as a "newspaperman's newspaper" because he encouraged sharp and lively writing, especially in a form the Sun called "the human interest story." Earlier in his career, while with Horace Greeley's New York Tribune, Dana had been the first American journalist to hold the title of managing editor of a newspaper.

Charles Anderson Dana was born 8 August 1819 in Hinsdale, a small town in western New Hampshire, to Anderson Dana and his first wife, Ann Denison. Charles's was the seventh generation of Danas in America, his ancestry dating back to a colonial settler, Richard Dana; on his mother's side, he counted Abigail Adams among his...