A businessman and editor, Frederic S. Cozzens pursued literature as an avocation. Often adopting the pseudonym Richard Haywarde, he wrote stories, sketches, and poems for many periodicals, most notably The Knickerbocker Magazine, in the 1840s and 1850s. His most popular work was The Sparrowgrass Papers; or, Living in the Country (1856), humorous stories of a city couple who take up a country residence in Yonkers, New York. The collection initiated the tradition of the suburban domestic sketch. His imitations of famous authors--notably Charles Lamb, Washington Irving, and Donald Grant Mitchell--displayed cleverness and skill, as did his literary burlesques in the Knickerbocker tradition of the early nineteenth century.

Born in New York City on 11 March 1818, Frederic Swartwout Cozzens professed an early dislike for history, though he eventually immersed himself in ancestral and antiquarian lore. His Quaker grandfather, who distinguished himself in the American Revolution, married a descendant of Richard Hayward...