About
Josiah Gilbert Holland (July 24, 1819 – October 12, 1881) was an American novelist, essayist, poet and spiritual mentor to the Nation in the years following the Civil War. Born in Massachusetts, he was “the most successful man of letters in the United States” in the latter half of the nineteenth century and sold more books in his lifetime than Mark Twain did in his.Holland penned the first biography of Abraham Lincoln within months of his death, which was a bestseller. He was also the first to publish a poem written by an African American.