Biography
Timothy Shay Arthur (6 Jun 1809 6 March 1885) was a member of the Temperance Movement; his book Ten Nights in a Bar-Room and What I Saw There (1854), helped demonized alcohol in the eyes of the American public.
Timothy Shay Arthur was a sickly child and did not go to school until he was nine years old. At the age of fourteen, he worked as a tailor’s apprentice but could not continue the job because of his poor eyesight. In the 1860s, Arthur dictated his writing because his eyesight failed him.
His 1880 novel Window Curtains was reissued in 1887 as Me Or the Story of the Window Curtains A Companion to She with false attribution to H. Rider Haggard.
Arthur’s best-selling novel, Ten Nights in a Bar-room and What I Saw There (1854) was the second best-selling novel of the 1800s, selling over one-million copies by 1900. Ten Nights in a Bar-room is often confused with William Pratt’s 1864 theatrical rendition of the novel, The Drunkard.”.
Arthur became an advocate of the Washingtonian Total Abstinence Society after witnessing one of their meetings. In 1874, Arthur wrote Woman to the Rescue for the Women’s Christian Temperance Union.
|
