Francis Colburn Adams

Francis Colburn Adams wrote nineteenth-century American fiction that mixed political satire, social observation, and adventure. His books include An Outcast and its fuller form, An Outcast; Or, Virtue and Faith, as well as Justice in the By-Ways and Manuel Pereira. He also wrote Siege of Washington, D.C. and the expanded Siege of Washington, D.C., written expressly for little people. The Von Toodleburgs turns toward comic family history, while The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter sends a boastful hero through politics, diplomacy, and war. Adams sometimes published as F. Colburn Adams and used the name Pheleg Van Trusedale for the Potter book. These eight works survive in editions whose abbreviated labels sit beside longer nineteenth-century title-page forms. Across the books, Adams repeatedly used invented lives and exaggerated institutions to criticize public vanity, civic corruption, slavery, and the gap between professed virtue and actual conduct.