C.M.Skinner, life

Charles Montgomery Skinner

1852 – 1907

American writer

Charles Montgomery Skinner, journalist and writer, was born in New York in 1852.  

During his lifetime, C.M. Skinner published some collections of myths, legends and folklore found inside the United States and across the world. Then, in 1896 he authored the complete nine volume set of Myths and Legends of Our Own Land. 

Skinner hoped that America’s progress would transform the nation’s few legends into great ones. He hoped to combine folklore conventions with New England transcendentalism to keep alive traditions endangered by the industrial age.

Skinner’s writings were wide ranging. He was a playwright, too, authoring the play Villon, the Vagabond.

C. M. Skinner’s other interests included the seasons, especially as they changed inside of industrializing cities. In order to improve the urban environment, he authored a guide to gardening and urban beautification.

He also commented on turn-of-the-century America’s turbulent economy in Workers and the Trusts and American Communes.

His other contributions to American literature included works of natural history such as With Feet to the Earth and Do-Nothing Days.

His career in journalism included editorship of the paper ‘Brooklyn Eagle’.

The Brooklyn Eagle, also called The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, was a daily newspaper  published in Brooklyn, New York, New York for 114 years, from 1841 to 1955. Walt Whitman was its editor for two years (from 1846 to 1848). The original paper ceased publication in 1955 due to a prolonged strike, before being briefly revived between 1960 and 1963.

Nowadays there is also a successor daily newspaper by the same name. As a matter of fact, in 1996 the name was revived once again for a new daily newspaper, which as of 2010 was still in operation.