Charles Joseph Finger (December 25, 1869 – January 7, 1941) was a British born American writer. He also directed an orchestra and taught piano.
Biography
Finger was born in Willesden, England, and educated at King's College London. He had a strong literary and musical formation, and was quite active in the Fabian movement. Finger was a keen disciple of Walt Whitman. As a youth and young man he reveled in the homosociality of the Regent Street Polytechnic created by Quintin Hogg, and as a bisexual, throughout his life he sought to create communities of like-minded readers. Intrinsic to his literary accomplishments were his future life in South America and Texas, and his love of men. At age 20 he began to travel extensively, visiting first Tierra del Fuego and Patagonia, where he worked as gold seeker, guide, and cook for the first sheep farming stations, in the period of Selknam genocide. He moved to New York and London, thereafter, and to a number of cities in Texas. He worked as an accountant and musician, eventually settling in Fayetteville, Arkansas, where he began to concentrate on writing.
In 1902, Finger married Eleanor (Nellie) Ferguson, daughter of a sheep rancher, with whom he would have five children.
He became the acting editor of the Reedy's Mirror after William Marion Reedy's death in 1920.
Finger won the 1925 Newbery Medal for the book Tales from Silver Lands (1924), a collection of stories from Central and South America. Some of his other works are Bushrangers (1924), Tales Worth Telling (1927), Courageous Companions (1929), and A Dog at His Heel (1936). His autobiography is Seven Horizons (1930).
