Thomas Wentworth Higginson

Newport out of season: a young man engaged to one cousin and in love with another, and a summer colony that watches. Higginson was a minister who helped storm a courthouse to free a fugitive slave, funded John Brown, commanded the first regiment of freed slaves in the Civil War, and later edited Emily Dickinson; this 1869 novel is the private side of a very public man, and Oldport is Newport with the names changed.