John Townsend Trowbridge - Writing Career

Writing Career

His novels include Neighbor Jackwood (1857), an antislavery novel; The Old Battle-Ground (1859); Cudjo's Cave (1864); The Three Scouts (1865); Lucy Arlyn (1866); Neighbors' Wives (1867); Coupon Bonds, and Other Stories (1873); and Farnell's Folly.Another is Evening At The Farm.

Trowbridge wrote numerous works under the pseudonym of Paul Creyton, including The Midshipman's Revenge (1849), Kate the Accomplice, or, The Preacher and the Burglar (1849), The Deserted Family, or, Wanderings of an Outcast (1853), Father Brighthopes, or, An Old Clergyman's Vacation (1853), Burr Cliff: its Sunshine and its Clouds (1853); Martin Merrivale: His X Mark (1854), Iron Thorpe (1855), Neighbor Jackwood (1857).

Among his very many juvenile tales are The Drummer Boy, The Prize Cup, The Lottery Ticket, The Tide-Mill Stories, The Toby Trafford Series, The Little Master, and the Jack Hazard series. His published volumes of verse include: The Vagabonds, and Other Poems; The Emigrant's Story, and Other Poems; A Home Idyl, and Other Poems; The Lost Earl; and The Book of Gold, and Other Poems. The Vagabonds, At Sea, Midsummer, and Guy Vernon: A Novelette in Verse are among his best-known poems.

In Darius Green and his Flying Machine, Trowbridge penned the following prophetic verse: "Darius was clearly of the opinion / That the air is also man's dominion / And that with paddle or fin or pinion, / We soon or late shall navigate / The azure as now we sail the sea."

He is today perhaps best remembered for his study *The South: A Tour of Its Battlefields and Ruined Cities* . Trowbridge toured much of the defeated Confederacy during the summer of 1865 and the following winter. He observed carefully, and talked with a wide variety of people of both sexes, including freedmen, die-hard Rebels, Unionists, farmers, businessmen, refugees, and Northern entrepreneurs. He lets them speak in their own voices, often adding his own perceptive comments. His book can profitably read with those of John Richard Dennett and Whitelaw Reid . All three accounts are written from the perspective of a loyal and fair Northerner, genuinely concerned about conditions in the South and the evolving policies of the United States towards that section.

Since his death he has been well known as a friend of Mark Twain and Walt Whitman.