This Bostonian writer and historian, grandson of John Quincy Adams, ex-president of the United States, had also been minister to Great Britain, teacher of medieval history at Harvard for seven years, and, reluctantly, a journalist.

His career as a famous writer started with History of the United States of America (1889-1991) after he had wrote two biographies, a first anonymous novel, and a second, Democracy, under a pseudonym in 1880. Deeply stunned after the suicide of his adored wife in 1885, Henry Adams began to travel both mentally and physically.