William Henry Herndon

The True Story of a Great Life

Abraham Lincoln

Jesse William Weik

The True Story of a Great Life ... The History and Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln

Herndon's Lincoln

Terry Wilson

Douglas Lawson Wilson

Rodney O. Davis

For twenty-five years after the president's death William Herndon, his law partner, conducted interviews with and solicited letters from dozens of persons who knew Lincoln personally.

Letters, Interviews, and Statements about Abraham Lincoln

Herndon's Informants

William H. Herndon aspired to write a faithful portrait of his friend and law partner, Abraham Lincoln, based on his own observations and on hundreds of letters and interviews he had compiled for the purpose. Even more important, he was determined to present Lincoln as a man, rather than a saint, and to reveal things that the prevailing Victorian conventions said should be left out of the biography of a great national hero. A variety of obstacles kept Herndon from writing his book, however, and not until he found a collaborator in Jesse W. Weik did the biography begin to take shape. It finally appeared in 1889, to decidedly mixed reviews. Though controversial from the outset, Herndon's Lincoln nonetheless established itself as a classic. This new edition restores the original text, includes two chapters added in the revised (1892) edition, and traces the story of how this landmark biography got written. Extensive annotation affords the reader a detailed look at the biography's sources.

William Henry Herndon

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