John Fiske (1842-1901)

Born in Hartford, Connecticut, as Edmund Fisk Green, he changed his name to that of a great-grandfather in 1855, John Fisk, adding the final e in 1860. He graduated from Harvard in 1863, and opened a law practice in Boston but soon turned to writing for periodicals. Nearly all of his books were first given to the public in the form of lectures or magazine articles, revised and collected under a general title.