Men of the Time, eleventh edition/Adams, William Henry Davenport
ADAMS, William Henry Davenport, author and journalist, born 1829, began his career as the editor of a provincial newspaper, and, removing to the metropolis at an early age, became connected with several influential journals and periodicals. Of late years he has devoted himself almost entirely to book-writing, producing numerous works of a miscellaneous character, and an annotated edition of the Plays of Shakspere. His adaptations from the French of Louis Figuier and Arthur Mangin have done good service to the cause of popular science in this country, and his translations of those famous rhapsodies of the late M. Michelet, "The Bird," "The Sea," "The Mountain," and "The Insect," have obtained popularity. Mr. Davenport Adams has also reproduced in English, from the manuscript of Mdme. Michelet, her charming monograph on "Nature, or the Poetry of Earth and Sea." His other publications, numbering upwards of a hundred, cannot, of course, be mentioned in detail; but we may refer to "The Bird World," "The Arctic World," "The Mediterranean Illustrated," "Episodes of Anglo-Indian History," "Woman's Work and Worth," "Women of Fashion and Representative Women in Letters and Society," 1878; "English Party-Leaders and English Parties, from Walpole to Peel," 2 vols., 1878; "Hours of the Cross," 1880; and "Plain Living and High Thinking," 1881. Mr. Adams was editor of The Scottish Guardian from June, 1870, to Dec., 1877. His son, Mr. W. Davenport Adams, has produced a "Dictionary of English Literature," and a work on "Famous Books," besides publishing three collections of annotated poetry, entitled "Lyrics of Love from Shakspere to Tennyson," "The Comic Poets of the Nineteenth Century," and "Latter-Day Lyrics."