Frank Richard Stockton was an American author and humorist who lived from April 5, 1834, to April 20, 1902. He is best known for a set of unique children's fairy tales that were very popular in the last few decades of the 1800s. Stockton was born in Philadelphia in 1834. His father was a famous Methodist preacher who told him he shouldn't become a writer. He and his wife went to Burlington, New Jersey, after getting married to Mary Ann Edwards Tuttle. That's where he wrote some of his first books. They then moved to New Jersey's Nutley. He worked as a wood carver for many years until his father died in 1860. He went back to Philadelphia in 1867 to work as a writer for a newspaper that his brother had started. His first fairy tale, "Ting-a-ling," came out in The Riverside Magazine that same year. In 1870, he released his first collection of stories. In the early 1870s, he was also the editor of the magazine Hearth and Home. He went to Charles Town, West Virginia, around 1899. He died of a brain bleed in Washington, DC, on April 20, 1902. He is buried at The Woodlands in Philadelphia.
