Timothy Shay Arthur, author, editor, publisher, devout Christian, temperance crusader, civic leader, and devoted father, was one of the most prolific and influential writers of mid-nineteenth-century America. During the forty years from 1840 to 1880 that form the core of his literary career, Arthur wrote well over two hundred novels and collections of tales and edited or contributed to an array of publications ranging from literary annuals and gift books to periodicals. In the J. W. Bradley catalogue for 1855, he is described as "the most popular of living authors." This sweeping statement is given substance by the fact that during the decade preceding the Civil War he was outsold in American fiction only by Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852). A voluminous writer of moral tales for both children and adults, Arthur is best remembered for his championship of the cause of temperance, an advocacy that made him for decades...