Harold Frederic was born in Utica, New York, on August 19, 1856. His father, Henry Frederick, who worked for the New York Central Railroad, was killed in a train accident when Frederic was two. His mother, Frances Ramsdell Frederick, remarried in 1861 to a businessman, and Frederic was raised in a middle-class environment. He showed an early talent for writing and drawing, although his formal education ended in 1871. When he was seventeen he went to live in Boston where he worked as a photographic printer and negative retoucher. In 1875, he was back in Utica, where his long career in journalism began as a proofreader for the Utica Morning Herald. Within five years he had risen to the position of editor-in-chief of the Utica Daily Observer. He had also started writing fiction, publishing several short stories in the newspaper. In 1877, he married Grace Williams, with whom he had four children...