Henry Morford

Henry Morford (March 10, 1823 – August 4, 1881) was an American writer, editor, and newspaperman. Originally a local businessman and postmaster of his native New Monmouth, New Jersey, he wrote poetry while on break from work and published three poetry volumes: The Rest of Don Juan (1846), The Rhymes of Twenty Years (1859), and Rhymes of an Editor (1873). He wrote several novels, plays, and travel books, including a sequel to Charles Dickens's The Mystery of Edwin Drood. He owned the Democratic Banner and New Jersey Standard (founding the latter), and was editor of the New York Leader, Morford's Magazine, and Brooklyn New Monthly Magazine.

Early life and career

Morford was born on March 10, 1823, in Chanceville, a community located in the present-day New Monmouth section of Middletown Township, New Jersey. His parents were Elizabeth Willett and William Morford, the latter of whom once started out as a farmer before running one of only two stores in New Monmouth. Morford's family, of English descent, worked in the agricultural, coal, lumber and mercantile industries. Educated at New Monmouth's village school, he worked at his father's business and as New Monmouth's postmaster.

Writing career

Becoming interested in creative writing sometime before the late-1830s, Morford wrote poetry while on break from work, and published his work in the Columbian Magazine, The Knickerbocker, The New Yorker, and The Saturday Evening Post, as well as in local Monmouth County newspapers. In 1846, he published "An Hour in the Old Playground", a New-York Mirror poem which the Monmouth Democrat said was "his first poem to attract general attention" and was praised by Nathaniel Parker Willis, as well as The Rest of Don Juan, a 645-stanza unofficial sequel to the Lord Byron poem Don Juan. He later published two poetry volumes, The Rhymes of Twenty Years (1859) and Rhymes of an Editor (1873); Daniel Webster Hollis said that both volumes "showed a mastery of the poetic form yet lacked any distinctive originality," and The New York Times remarked that they "contain much meritorious verse."