Charles Dudley Warner (1829-1900) was an American essayist and novelist. He worked with a surveying party in Missouri; studied law at the University of Pennsylvania; practiced in Chicago; was assistant editor (1860) and editor (1861-1867) of The Hartford Press, and after The Press was merged into The Hartford Courant, was co-editor with Joseph R Hawley; in 1884 he joined the editorial staff of Harper's Magazine, for which he conducted The Editors Drawer until 1892, when he took charge of The Editor's Study. He travelled widely, lectured frequently, and was actively interested in prison reform, city park supervision, and other movements for the public good. He was the first president of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. He first attracted attention by the reflective sketches entitled My Summer in a Garden (1870). Amongst his other works are Saunterings (1872), Backlog Studies (1873), Being a Boy (1878), In the Wilderness (1878), Captain John Smith (1881), Washington Irving (1881), A Little Journey in the World (1889), As We Were Saying (1891) and That Fortune (1899).