Edward Everett Hale is best known for two short stories he collected in If, Yes, and Perhaps (1868): "The Man Without a Country" (first published in the Atlantic Monthly, December 1863) and a facetious account of a busy clergyman who attempted to employ a stand-in, "My Double and How He Undid Me" (Atlantic Monthly, September 1859). The son of Nathan and Sarah Preston Everett Hale, Edward Everett Hale counted among his ancestors some of the most illustrious Boston Brahmins. He was the grandnephew of Capt. Nathan Hale, the youthful Revolutionary War spy who--captured and about to be executed by the British--expressed his regret at having only one life to lose for his country. Edward Everett, Hale's maternal uncle, was a famous orator who became governor of Massachusetts, minister to England, secretary of state, and a U.S. senator. Hale's father was owner and editor of the Boston Daily Advertiser.

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