EDWARD

See also:

• PAYSON, EDWARD (1783–1827)

PAYSON

See also:

• ROE (or Row), SIR THOMAS (c. 1581—1644)
• EDWARD PAYSON ROE (1838-1888)

ROE (1838-1888)  , American novelist, was born in Moodna, Orange county, N.Y., on the 7th of March 1838 . He studied at Williams College and at Auburn Theo-logical Seminary; in 1862 became chaplain of the Second New York Cavalry, U.S.V., and in 1864 chaplain of Hampton Hospital, at Hampton, Virginia . In 1866-74 he was pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Highland Falls, N.Y . In 1874 he removed to Cornwall-on-the-Hudson, where he devoted himself to the writing of fiction and to horticulture . He died on the 19th of July 1888 . During the Civil War he wrote weekly II letters to the New York Evangelist, and subsequently lectured on the war and wrote for periodicals . Among his novels were Barriers Burned Away (1872), which first appeared as a serial in the Evangelist and made him widely known; What Can she Do ? (1873), Opening of 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 (188o), Without a Home (1881), Nature's Serial Story (1884), A Young Girl's Wooing (1884), An Original Belle (1885), He Fell in Love with his Wife (1886), The Earth Trembled (1887) and Miss Lou (left unfinished, 1888) . He wrote also Play and Profit in My Garden (1873), Success with Small Fruits (1881) and The Home Acre (1887) . His novels were very popular in their day, especially with middle-class readers in England and America, and were translated into several European languages . Their strong moral and religious purpose, and their being written by a clergyman, did much to break down a Puritan prejudice in America against works of fiction . See E .

P .

Roe: Reminiscences of his Life (New York, 1899), by his sister, Mary A . Roe .