EDWARD PAYSON ROE.
AUTHOR OF “BARRIERS BURNED AWAY.”
R. ROE is not considered as one of the strongest of American novelists; but that he was one of the most popular among the masses of the people, from 1875 to the time of his death, goes without saying. His novels were of a religious character, and while they were doubtless lacking in the higher arts of the fictionist, he invariably told an interesting story and pointed a healthy moral. “Barriers Burned Away” is, perhaps, his best novel, and it has been declared by certain critics to be at once one of the most vivid portrayals and correct pictures of the great Chicago fire that occurred in 1871 which has up to this time been written.
Edward Payson Roe was born at New Windsor, New York, in 1838, and died, when fifty years of age, at Cornwall, the same State, in 1888. He was being educated at Williams College, but had to leave before graduating owing to an affection of the eyes. In consequence of his literary work, however, the college in after years gave him the degree of A. B. In 1862, he volunteered his services in the army and served as chaplain throughout the Civil War. From 1865 to 1874 he was pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Highland Falls, New York. In 1874 he resigned his pastorate, and, to the time of his death, gave himself to literature and to the cultivation of a small fruit farm.
Other works of this author, after “Barriers Burned Away,” are “Play and Profit in my Garden” (1873); “What Can She Do?” (1873); “Opening a Chestnut Burr” (1874); “From Jest to Earnest” (1875); “Near to Nature’s Heart” (1876); “A Knight of the Nineteenth Century” (1877); “A Face Illumined” (1878); “A Day of Fate” (1880); “Success with Small Fruits” (1880); “Without a Home” (1880); “His Sombre Rivals” (1883); “A Young Girl’s Wooing” (1884); “Nature’s Serial Story” (1884); “An Original Belle” (1885); “Driven Back to Eden” (1885); “He Fell in Love with His Wife” (1886); “The Earth Trembled” (1887); “Miss Lou” (1888); “The Home Acre” (1889) and “Taken Alive” (1889), the two last mentioned being published after the death of the author.
CHRISTINE, AWAKE FOR YOUR LIFE![¹]
[¹] Copyright, Dodd, Mead & Co.
