Henry Cuyler Bunner

Henry Cuyler Bunner (August 3, 1855 – May 11, 1896) was an American novelist and poet. He is known mainly for Tower of Babel.

Bunner's works have been praised by librarians for its " technical dexterity, playfulness and smoothness of finish ".

Biography

Henry Cuyler Bunner was born in Oswego, New York to Rudolph Bunner, Jr. (1813–1875) and Ruth Keating Tuckerman (1821–1896) and was educated in New York City. His paternal grandparents were Rudolph Bunner (1779–1837) and Elizabeth Church (1783–1867), the daughter of John Barker Church (1748–1818) and Angelica Schuyler (1756–1814).

In 1886, he published a novel, The Midge, followed in 1887 by The Story of a New York House. But his best efforts in fiction were his short stories and sketches Short Sixes (1891), More Short Sixes (1894), Made in France (1893), Zadoc Pine and Other Stories (1891), Love in Old Clothes and Other Stories (1896), and Jersey Street and Jersey Lane (1896). His verses Airs from Arcady and Elsewhere (1884), containing the well-known poem, The Way to A ready; Rowen (1892); and Poems (1896), edited by his friend Brander Matthews, displaying a light play of imagination and a delicate workmanship. He also wrote clever vers de société and parodies. One of his several plays (usually written in collaboration), was The Tower of Babel (1883).

His short story Zenobia's Infidelity was made into a feature film called Zenobia starring Harry Langdon and Oliver Hardy by the Hal Roach Studio in 1939.

Personal life

Bunner married Alice Learned (1863–1952), daughter of Joshua Coit Learned (1819–1892), and granddaughter of Joshua Coit (1758–1798), U.S. Representative from Connecticut. Together, they had:

• Rudolph Bunner (1887–1888), who died young
• Ruth Tuckerman Bunner (1890–1946), who married Harold Edwin Dimock (1884–1967) in 1917, brother of Edith Dimock (1876–1955), the artist.
• Philip Schuyler Bunner (1892–1892), who died young
• Laurence H. Bunner (1894–1974)

Bunner died on May 11, 1896 in Nutley, New Jersey.