T.S. Arthur was a popular 19th-century American author. He is most famous for his temperance novel Ten Nights in a Bar-Room. Ten Nights in a Bar-Room. The story of a small-town miller (perhaps based on Arthur's father) who gives up his trade to open a tavern, the novel's narrator is an infrequent visitor who over the course of several years traces the physical and moral decline of the proprietor, his family, and the town's citizenry due to alcohol. Arthur attained great popularity while he lived, but was not well regarded by the era's literati. His old acquaintance Poe, for example, wrote in Graham's Magazine that Arthur was "uneducated and too fond of mere vulgarities to please a refined taste." Conscious of his own lack of brilliance, Arthur thought stories should impart beneficial life lessons by means of plainly written, realistically depicted scenes. Arthur's writing at its best-as in Ten Nights in a Bar-Room-can be both brisk and poignant.
- ISBN10 1523364076
- ISBN13 9781523364077
- Publish Date 12 January 2016 (first published 8 August 2010)
- Publish Status Active
- Imprint Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
- Format Paperback (US Trade)
- Pages 110
- Language English