Timothy Shay Arthur (6 June 1809-6 March 1885), one of the most prolific American writers of the nineteenth century, is best remembered today for a single work of temperance fiction-- Ten Nights in a Bar-Room and What I Saw There (1854). Between 1840 and 1880 he wrote more than 150 novels and collections of tales, most of which offered some moral message or support for the cause of temperance. Yet of all his prodigious literary efforts, his only surviving claim to fame is the tearful saga of those ten awesome visits to the Sickle and Sheaf Tavern where Demon Rum ravaged the villagers who patronized the saloon. It has been estimated that Arthur produced more than six percent of all the native fiction published in the United States during the 1840s, and sales records reveal that it was not uncommon for individual titles to sell 25,000 copies. By 1860 his books had sold more than a...