Novels and Short Stories

by Timothy Shay Arthur

Born: Jun 06, 1809 · Newburgh, NY; Died: Mar 06, 1885 · Philadelphia, PA

Timothy Shay Arthur — known as T. S. Arthur — was a popular 19th-century American author. He is famously known for his temperance novel “Ten Nights In A Bar Room and What I Saw There,” which helped demonize alcohol in the eyes of the American public. His stories, written with compassion and sensitivity articulate and spread values and ideas that were associated with “respectable middle class” life in America. He also believed greatly in the transformative and restorative power of love as is shown in one of his stories, “An Angel in Disguise” (story is located in "Short Stories" in menu on left.)

“Timothy Shay Arthur has done more for American literature than any one other person. His name will be remembered and loved, when those of his critics will be forgotten, together with their productions. I doubt if there is another man in the country who has done such a vast, such a measureless amount of good with the pen. There is probably not another American writer who has produced so much, as Arthur.”

"Arthur was the most popular and widely read author of his times!"

“All of the books from the pen of Timothy Shay Arthur are most interesting, and of a high moral and useful tone. To read any of them, must improve the character and the conduct. Mr. Arthur's works are all wholesome; they inculcate morality and purify the feelings — by tastefully illustrating the beauties of virtue, and the iniquities of vice.

This below was written by the editor in 1855 about the novel T. S. Arthur wrote “Trials and Triumph”.

“This is one of the very best he has written, “Trials and Triumph”, and a copy of it should be in every family and household in the land, for no one, either old or young, can read it without profiting by it. Like all of the writings of this author, there is a strong moral tone to this work, which cannot fail to produce an uplifting impression on the mind of the reader. It will be read with interest by all the admirers of wholesome novels, and will be seized on with avidity by the thousands of readers who prefer Mr. Arthur’s useful and instructive sketches to the flimsy novels which overstock the market. To Mr. Arthur the public are indebted for a species of composition that while it affords delight, conveys at the same time, many moral and practical lessons for life.” (Editor, 1855)