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Elizur Wright (1804–1885) is largely remembered for his activities in two areas. During the 1830s, he was active in the newly-organized American abolitionist movement. And in the 1850s, he started a thirty-year involvement in the insurance field, becoming known to the general public for his outspoken stance on various reforms in that field. In between these two periods, Wright earned some recognition in literary circles for his English-language translation of La Fontaine's Fables. And towards the end of his life, Wright's attention turned first to free thought and then to conservation, the latter with particular respect to the woodlands near his home in Medford, Massachusetts. Wright was a prolific writer in all of these fields.

Overview
Wright's initial post-university occupation was as a missionary in western Pennsylvania. But after just a few months, he took a teaching position at Ohio's Western Reserve College and his earliest published writings were evangelical articles that appeared in Ohio newspapers in the early 1830s. His first major work was the abolitionist The Sin of Slavery, self-published shortly after he re-located to New York in 1833. Wright's time in New York was spent as a full-time activist, first with the New York Anti-Slavery Society and, later in 1833, with the newly-formed American Anti-Slavery Society. He served as an editor and contributor to the two societies' various journals and newspapers, but was largely uncredited in these roles. Wright was also one of the American Anti-Slavery Society's initial cadre of officers and, as such, played a major role in writing the society's official publications. And after re-locating to Boston in 1839, he continued to work as an editor, first for the Massachusetts Abolition Society and then for the abolitionist Liberty Party. However, this work ceased in the early 1840s. After that, Wright's only major abolitionist writings were three short books that were published in the early 1860s and, towards the very end of his life, a biography of Myron Holley, one of the organizers of the Liberty Party.

After ceasing active involvement in the abolitionist cause, Wright turned to writing for profit. He produced an English-language translation of the French Fables by Jean de La Fontaine. It was a critical success that motivated a bookselling tour to England in 1844. Shortly after his return, Wright began to produce his own daily newspaper, the Chronotype. Although about half of the paper was composed of advertisements, it also contained editorials in which Wright provided his opinions on a variety of social and political topics that he collectively called the "sisterhood of reforms". After he ended his connection to the paper in the early 1850s, Wright began his lengthy involvement with the insurance industry.

Aside from an article that appeared in Hunt's Merchants' Magazine in 1852, Wright's first insurance-related publication was his Valuation Tables. This book, consisting of about 100 pages of pre-calculated actuarial factors, made it possible for a life insurance company to measure its liabilities without the aid of a professional actuary. Wright appears to have published nothing else of note during the 1850s. Indeed, much of this period of his life is not well documented and it seems that he mostly engaged in consulting work for insurance companies. But he also successfully lobbied for a change in the insurance laws of Massachusetts. When his law was finally passed in 1858, Wright became one of the two insurance commissioners appointed to implement it. He remained a commissioner for eight years and, for each of those years, produced reports that, although nominally intended for the Massachusetts state legislature, were made available to the general public. The reports on insurance companies, especially life insurance companies, were popular items. They were discussed in the industry's trade press and the state generally sold every copy it printed. Demand for the life insurance reports was so great that Massachusetts re-published the first seven of them in a single volume in 1865. After being ousted from the Massachusetts insurance commission in 1866, Wright became a prolific writer in the insurance field. He was a frequent contributor to the insurance trade press, both in the form of articles and in the form of letters to the editors (some of which were as lengthy as articles). His letters also appeared in the general newspapers of Boston and New York. And in addition to several technical publications, Wright wrote six books on insurance that were intended for the general public. In his entry in the International Insurance Encyclopedia, Wright was described as becoming "the leader ... in the work of popularizing life insurance".

Although Wright never ceased writing about insurance (his final article on the subject was published posthumously), he became less involved in the field during the final years of his life. At about the time he turned 70, Wright become a vocal proponent of free thought and was a frequent contributor to Francis Abbot's The Index. In the final years of his life, his attention turned to conservation, with particular focus on the Middlesex Fells woodlands near his home. Wright authored a short book on the topic (The Voice of a Tree from the Middlesex Fells) and his letters about the Fells frequently appeared in Boston-area newspapers. These writings, as well as the texts of some poems and speeches, were published in book form by his daughter in 1893 (and re-published in 1904 with an expanded discussion of Wright's work).

Prior to his father's death in 1845, Wright generally appended "Jr." or "Jun." to his name.

Anti-slavery books
Wright became radicalized to the abolitionist movement while teaching at Ohio's Western Reserve College in 1832, and his first writings on the subject date back to this period. In their Father of Life Insurance, the Wrights mention two self-published pamphlets that were issued in 1833. The first was The Sin of Slavery, and its Remedy, which was reviewed in the monthly paper Genius of Universal Emancipation. The second pamphlet mentioned by the Wrights–The Christian Spectator's Defense of Slavery–appears to have not survived, if indeed it was published at all. The Christian Spectator was the former name of the publication now known as the Yale Review.

Wright re-located to New York in early 1833. When the American Anti-Slavery Society was founded in late 1833, Wright was one of its initial officers and assumed various editorial roles (details of which appear in the section below). The Society also published Annual Reports that, in addition to recording the various resolutions and other business conducted at the annual meetings, included an extensive narrative summarizing the Society's activities for the prior year. In his capacity as the Domestic Correspondence Secretary, Wright was the author of the first four Reports. But by mid 1837, his provocative and increasingly secularist opinions caused the Society's senior officers to limit Wright's influence. The fifth and sixth Annual Reports were credited to the Society's Executive Committee, of which Wright was a member. Details on the narrative portions of the Annual Reports are provided below in the Articles section. Wright re-located from New York to Boston in May 1839 and had no further role in writing the Annual Reports.

Throughout the rest of the 1840s and the 1850s, Wright did little writing in the anti-slavery field. Except for whatever items might have appeared in the Chronotype, the only anti-slavery piece from this period was in his 1850 book Perforations in the "Latter-Day Pamphlets". Wright was credited as the editor of this book, but it consists of a single three-part essay that is not attributed to anyone else. Wright biographer Lawrence Goodheart considers it to have been written by Wright. The three topics addressed in the essay were universal suffrage, capital punishment, and slavery. The book was a rejoinder to Thomas Carlyle's ''Latter-Day Pamphlets.

Wright's final three books on anti-slavery were issued while he was an insurance commissioner for Massachusetts. These three books appeared in 1860, 1861 and 1862; their publication details are given in the table immediately below. According to its title page, the text of the 1861 book (The Lesson of St. Domingo) originally appeared in the New York Tribune on May 27, 1861. The final book, 1862's The Programme of Peace, was credited to "A Democrat of the Old School". Wright biographer Lawrence Goodheart considers it to have been written by Wright.

In the table, the column "LoC link?" indicates whether a link to an on-line copy of the book appears in the Library of Congress entry. For those that indicate "no", see the On-line Copies section below.

Insurance books
Wright's first book in the insurance field was his 1853 Valuation Tables. Aside from some introductory material, the book comprised about 100 pages of figures and was intended to enable life insurance companies to quickly estimate the actuarial values of their in-force policies. It is not known when Wright actually began to produce these figures. But it is known that, prior to publication, he had secured subscriptions from six life insurers. After providing those companies with their copies (reportedly handwritten), Wright offered additional copies for sale to others, which was permitted under the subscription agreement so long as the others paid at least as much as did the subscribers. Looking to the very large number of calculations required to produce the Tables, Wright biographer Lawrence Goodheart described it as "one of the most prodigious feats in actuarial history".

Throughout Wright's tenure there, the Massachusetts insurance commission was tasked with producing annual reports to the state legislature. There were two reports—one covering loan fund associations (precursors of the modern savings and loan associations) and another covering insurance companies of all types (i.e., not just those that sold life insurance, but also those that sold fire and marine insurance). Detail on these reports is provided in a separate section below. Although all of the reports were co-signed by Wright and his fellow commissioner George W. Sargent, both of Wright's major biographers (the Wrights and Goodheart) consider the life insurance material to have been written primarily, if not solely, by him. In 1865, Massachusetts re-published the first seven of the life insurance reports as a stand-alone volume under the title Massachusetts Reports on Life Insurance: 1859–1865 (which covered the reports for the years 1858 through 1864). The re-publication included a technical appendix that was explicitly attributed solely to Wright. This entire volume was re-published by the American Conservation Company in 1932 as part of its Bible of Life Insurance. None of the re-publications included Wright's final life insurance report, which was published in 1866 to address the year ending in 1865.

Almost immediately after being ousted from his position as an insurance commission in May 1866, Wright self-published his A Curiosity of Law. Largely an account of the circumstances that led to the ouster, it also included an autobiographical overview of his abolitionist days and some technical discussion of the work that he did as a commissioner. In subsequent years, Wright became a frequent contributor to the newspapers and magazines of the day, both those that were intended for the insurance trade and those intended for the general public. A listing of his various writings appears in the section on Insurance Articles below. Starting in 1871, Wright began to publish books on the subject. Some of these were technical in nature, such that they would have been of interest only to people in the insurance field. The first of these was the 1871 second edition ("Revised and Enlarged") of his 1853 Valuation Tables. But after that, Wright began to write insurance-related books for the general public. They varied greatly in size and none were intended as textbooks. The most substantive of them was 1873's Politics and Mysteries of Life Insurance. This book, more than any of the others listed in the table below, provides a comprehensive statement of Wright's opinions on how the American life insurance industry should be operated.

Three matters of note:
 * 1) Three of the books listed in the table below have the names of specific life insurance companies in their titles (the 1872 text for the Knickerbocker Life and the 1881 and 1882 texts).  Although these books were registered at the Library of Congress, there is no evidence that they were ever intended for distribution to the general public.
 * 2) The 1874 report to the Boston Board of Trade is from an unnamed committee, of which Wright was one of five members.  Wright biographer Lawrence Goodheart considers him to have been the report's author.  It was appended by a petition to incorporate (in Massachusetts) the American Family Bank, an institution that would provide its members with life insurance and use the premium income to provide the members with home mortgages.
 * 3) Books for which on-line copies are not available have their bibliographic data taken either from the Library of Congress listing or from the Bibliography section of Goodheart's Abolitionist, Actuary, Atheist (pages 256–258).  Detail which could not be verified from these sources has been left blank.  Nonetheless, 1871's Life Insurance was likely self-published in Boston and 1878's Necessity of Reform was likely self-published.

In the table, the column "LoC link?" indicates whether a link to an on-line copy of the book appears in the Library of Congress entry. For those that indicate "no", as well as those that do not have a Library of Congress entry, see the On-line Copies section below.

Other books
While still teaching in Ohio at Western Reserve College, Wright gave a lecture denouncing the use of tobacco. The students of the College so admired the lecture that they arranged to have it printed in book form as A Lecture on Tobacco, Delivered in the Chapel of the Western Reserve College, Hudson, Ohio, May 29, 1832. It is not known how many copies were printed and there is no evidence that the book was ever intended for distribution to the general public. The 14-page book was briefly noticed by the American Journal of Science and Arts in its July 1833 issue.

After his editorial ties with the abolitionist movement were severed, Wright turned to writing for profit. In 1841, he published an English translation of the French-language Fables by Jean de La Fontaine. More discussion of this book appears in the Poetry section below.

In 1850, Wright produced the 48-page Perforations in the "Latter-Day Pamphlets", a rejoinder to Thomas Carlyle's Latter-Day Pamphlets. The Carlysle work, published earlier in 1850, was a reprint of a series of pamphlets in which he opined on a variety of topics. Wright's work contested Carlysle's opinions on three of those topics—slavery, capital punishment and universal suffrage. Wright credited himself as the book's editor, and not its author, but no other person is identified as writing it. Wright biographer Lawrence Goodheart considers him to have been the author. The text was identified on its title page as "No. 1", but no subsequent volumes were published.

Wright moved his family to Medford, Massachusetts in 1864. A few years later (in 1869), he issued a pamphlet calling for the nearby Middlesex Fells woodlands to be converted into a public park, which he proposed be named Mount Andrew Park in honor of John Albion Andrew, a former governor of Massachusetts. Wright did little further on this front for another ten years, at which point it became the primary focus of his attention. Wright's last two books were written during this final period of his life. But the first of them was not about the woodlands. Instead, it was a biography of Myron Holley, an organizer of the abolitionist Liberty Party who had earlier been one of the commissioners supervising the construction of the Erie Canal. The 328-page book, self-published by Wright in Boston in 1882, was titled Myron Holley; and What He Did for Liberty and True Religion.

Wright's final book was 1883's The Voice of a Tree from the Middlesex Fells. The first half of the 28-page book is a discussion of the importance of forests, purportedly written by a tree named Pinus Strobus (i.e., a pine tree). To that, Wright appended the text of a recently-enacted Massachusetts forestry law. He also added a "Form of Conditional Obligation" under which a person could make a legally-binding commitment to donate a specified amount of money (or its value in land) to a group of twenty-six trustees. If the trustees succeeded in getting certain nearby towns to agree to a sale of land, the donations would be used to purchase that land and place it in the public domain. In introducing the form, Wright noted that it would be returned to the donor upon payment of the promised sum and that the donor would find it to be "a valuable and historical document to hand down to his or her posterity".

After his death, the entire contents of Voice of a Tree were re-printed in Elizur Wright's Appeals for the Middlesex Fells and the Forests. This book, compiled by Wright's daughter Ellen and published in 1893 (and again in 1904), was a collection of dozens of his writings on conservation, mostly in connection with the Middlesex Fells. For more detail on this book, see the Other Articles section below.

Anti-slavery articles
Upon his re-location to New York, Wright assisted in the publication of four anti-slavery journals—Lewis Tappan's Human Rights, the New York Anti-Slavery Society's The Emancipator, the American Anti-Slavery Society's Reporter and its successor, the Anti-Slavery Record. Wright's exact role in these publications has not been well-documented, but it appears that he was the author of much of the material appearing in them. Nonetheless, many of their articles are unattributed and, with few exceptions, no biographer of Wright's has attributed any particular article to him. The few exceptions are noted in the table below. Attribution becomes possible starting in 1835 with the Quarterly Anti-Slavery Magazine (also a publication of the American Anti-Slavery Society). It published several articles attributed only to "the Editor", but Wright was identified as the editor for the magazine's entire two-year run. It also published some unattributed articles, one of which has been identified as Wright's by one of his biographers. Details appear in the table below.

During Wright's tenure with the American Anti-Slavery Society, each of its Annual Reports included an extensive narrative summarizing the Society's activities for the prior year. These narrative were also called "annual reports". Wright was the sole author of these narratives for the first four Reports. Starting with the fifth (1838), authorship was credited to the Society's Executive Committee, of which Wright was a member (the other two members were James G. Birney and Henry Brewster Stanton). Details appear in the table below.

After re-locating to Boston in 1839, Wright worked for two years as the editor of The Massachusetts Abolitionist and the Free American. This period of Wright's career is not well-documented and it is not known how much of the material appearing in these journals was written by him.

The table in this section includes articles that were written or-co-written by Wright. The following is a key to the publication entries.


 * "American Anti-Slavery Society" refers to the Annual Reports issued by the Society. In addition to recording the various resolutions and other business conducted at the annual meetings, each Annual Report included an extensive narrative summarizing the Society's activities for the prior year.  These narratives were also called "annual reports".    This entry at the Library of Congress includes a link to on-line copies of the Annual Reports.
 * The Anti-Slavery Examiner is the journal published irregularly in New York by the American Anti-Slavery Society. Its first issue was dated August 1836 and the last appears to have been published at some point in 1840.    This entry at the Library of Congress includes a link to on-line copies of the journal.
 * The Anti-Slavery Record is the monthly magazine published in New York by the American Anti-Slavery Society. It had no identified editor and ran for 36 issues, from January 1835 through December 1837.
 * The Anti-Slavery Reporter is the monthly journal published in New York by the American Anti-Slavery Society. It had no identified editor and ran for just eight issues, from January 1834 through August 1834.    This entry at the Library of Congress includes a link to on-line copies of the journal.
 * Genius of Universal Emancipation is the monthly periodical published in Washington (DC) by Benjamin Lundy. The volume number for the issue listed here refers to the Third Series of the periodical,
 * The Massachusetts Abolitionist is the weekly newspaper published in Boston by the Massachusetts Abolition Society.
 * Quarterly Anti-Slavery refers to the Quarterly Anti-Slavery Magazine, a quarterly publication of the American Anti-Slavery Society. It was published for two years, from October 1835 through July 1837, with Elizur Wright as its editor for the entire time.    This entry at the Library of Congress includes a link to on-line copies of the magazine.

Insurance articles
BACKGROUND TEXT

ADD article on Tontine Plan re-printed in Vol. 1 of the Insurance Law Journal

The table in this section includes articles that either were written by Wright or that contain substantive excerpts from his works (including transcripts of his speeches). The following is a key to the publication entries.
 * Baltimore Underwriter is the monthly publication edited by C.C. Bombaugh.
 * Boston Evening Transcript is the daily newspaper founded in 1830 by Henry Dutton and James Wentworth.
 * Bradstreet's refers to Bradstreet's: A journal of trade, finance, and public economy, published daily in New York by the Bradstreet Company.  Bradstreet later merged with R. G. Dun to form Dun and Bradstreet.
 * Chronicle refers to The Chronicle: A weekly insurance journal, edited by John O'Donoghue and Edgar Hewitt and published weekly in New York.
 * Hunt's Merchants' Magazine refers to Hunt's Merchants' Magazine and Commercial Review, edited by Freeman Hunt and published monthly in New York.
 * The Index
 * Insurance Journal refers to The Insurance Journal: A monthly review of fire and life insurance, edited by H.R. Hayden and published in Hartford, Connecticut. The articles indicated as "(untitled)" generally are from the Journal's "Review of the Month" section, which consisted of a varying number of untitled items.  Note that the publication schedule was a bit erratic during 1880.
 * Insurance Law Journal
 * Insurance Times refers to The Insurance Times: A journal solely devoted to life, fire and marine insurance, edited by Stephen English and published monthly in New York.
 * North American Review is the literary journal edited by Allen Thorndike Rice and published monthly in New York.

Other articles
By far, most of Wright's article-length writings were about abolition and insurance. But there are a few examples of article-length writing that date to the period between his involvement in those two fields. After Wright ceased his full-time work for the abolitionist cause in the early 1840s, he turned to writing for profit. This activity produced an English-language translation of La Fontaine's Fables, which also led Wright to make a sales trip to England (discussed in detail in the Poetry section below). While there, a publishing firm got him to write a two-page preface to a book of poems by John Greenleaf Whittier, a friend of Wright's from his abolitionist days. The book was published in 1844. And shortly after his return from England, Wright began publishing his Chronotype newspaper. Its editorials addressed a wide variety of topics, as discussed in the Editing section below.

In the mid 1870s, Wright became active in the free thought movement and became an occasional contributor to The Index, a weekly paper edited by Francis Abbot. He became an "editorial contributor" for the paper in mid 1877, at which point the frequency of his articles there increased substantially. And at about this same time, Wright developed an interest in conservation, particularly with respect to the Middlesex Fells area near his home in Medford, Massachusetts. During his last five years, Wright published dozens of articles and letters in Boston-area newspapers and, in 1893 (eight years after his death), his daughter Ellen compiled them into a single book-length work, Elizur Wright's Appeals for the Middlesex Fells and the Forests.

The following is a key to the publication entries.


 * Boston Daily Advertiser ___________
 * Boston Evening Transcript is the daily newspaper founded in 1830 by Henry Dutton and James Wentworth.
 * Boston Herald ___________
 * Boston Journal ___________ In 1917, it merged with the Boston Herald to become The Boston Herald and Boston Journal.
 * Boston Traveller refers to the daily newspaper published by the Upton, Ladd company. The name of the paper varied over time and did not become the Boston Traveller until 1894.  At the time the articles cited here were published, the paper was called the Daily Evening Traveller.
 * Boston Worker ___________
 * Commonwealth refers to the Boston Commonwealth, the weekly newspaper published by Charles W. Slack.
 * The Index refers to The Index: A weekly paper devoted to free religion. It was published weekly by the Index Association from 1870 to ____, first in Toledo, Ohio and, starting in ____, in Boston (with an additional office in New York during some of the years in Toledo).  For the period considered here, its editor was Francis Abbot.  Although the paper was largely devoted to discussions of issues surrounding religion, it also published articles on political and financial matters.  Note that, in the table below, the issue number is the "whole number" that does not reset to "1" when the volume number changes.
 * Insurance Times refers to The Insurance Times: A journal solely devoted to life, fire and marine insurance, edited by Stephen English and published monthly in New York.
 * Massachusetts Ploughman refers to Massachusetts Ploughman and New England Journal of Agriculture. It was published weekly in Boston by the New England Agricultural Society.
 * The Medford Mercury is the weekly newspaper that later became the Medford Daily Mercury. It was published by Samuel W. Lawrence from 1880 through 1902.
 * Melrose Journal is the weekly newspaper published from 1870 through 1905 by H.C. Gray in Melrose, Massachusetts.

Temp header
Two notes on the entries in the table:
 * 1) Items that relate to insurance have been duplicated above in the table for Insurance Articles.
 * 2) FULL CITATION FOR Appeals.  LACK OF COMPLETE BIBLIOGRAPHIC DETAIL FOR THE APPEALS ENTRIES

The only item for which she did provide that detail was a letter to the editor of the Boston Evening Transcript, printed on page 4 of the January 26, 1883 edition.

Editing
After re-locating to New York in early 1833, Wright became actively involved in the abolitionist movement. His biographers all agree that much of this activity was related to various anti-slavery magazines and journals. But Wright appears to have not been explicitly credited as either a contributor or as an editor for any of them until 1835. In that year, the American Anti-Slavery Society began its Quarterly Anti-Slavery Magazine which, for its entire two-year run, did identify Wright as its editor. And when an article-length obituary of Wright appeared in the November 1885 issue of The Insurance Times, the Quarterly was the only New York anti-slavery publication to be mentioned. However, subsequent biographies have expanded the list. Just four years after his death, Wright's entry in Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography stated that he also served as an editor of the New York Anti-Slavery Society's The Emancipator and Lewis Tappan's Human Rights journal. And in the preface to a 1900 book on John Greenleaf Whittier, the author noted that Wright and Whittier served as editors of the American Anti-Slavery Society's The Anti-Slavery Reporter. The most recent of Wright's major biographies (Goodheart, 1990) states that he performed editorial duties at all four of these publications.

Wright moved to Boston in May 1839 and became the editor of the Massachusetts Abolitionist, the journal of the newly-established Massachusetts Abolition Society. He did this for about one year, after which he became editor for the Liberty Party's Free American journal. This too lasted only about one year. In both cases, Wright was ousted from the position because of his controversial editorial stance.

After ceasing his bookselling tours for the Fables, Wright settled into his next editing venture–his own daily newspaper, The Chronotype. Its first issue appeared in February 1846 and it continued through to the end of 1850. For most of this period, Wright also published a weekly edition, called The Weekly Chronotype (and he distinguished the original paper by renaming it The Daily Chronotype). The daily edition was four pages long and about half of it was given over to advertisements. But in the other half, Wright offered his opinions on the major political issues of the day. These issues included not just abolition, but also the Mexican-American War, pro-slavery Massachusetts politician Robert Charles Winthrop, the Liberty Party, women's suffrage and the Free Soil Party. He also expounded on the economic issues of tariffs, wage reform and land reform. Other issues included the reform of the U.S. Postal Service, associationism, hydropathy, "bloomers" and spelling reform. Wright sold the Chronotype in early 1851 to owners who merged it with another paper to create The Commonwealth. They also hired Wright to serve as an editor for the merged publication, but denied him a free hand in writing its editorials. This paid position ended in May 1852.

There is evidence to suggest that Wright engaged in some other editorial activity both before and after his involvement with the Chronotype/Commonwealth. His obituary in the Boston Evening Transcript reports that he had also served as editor of the Chainbreaker, presumably a reference to the Free State Rally and Texan Chain Breaker. This short-lived paper ceased publication in January 1846, just one month before Wright began publishing his Chronotype. But no subsequent biographer of Wright has corroborated this report. And his entry in Appleton's Insurance Cyclopedia states that he was an editor of the Railroad Times in the mid 1850's, but gives no further details.

La Fontaine's Fables
A few months after ceasing his editorial work for the abolitionist papers, Wright published an English translation of the French-language Fables of La Fontaine. According to the book's prefacing remarks, translation began on an informal basis in 1837 when Wright purchased a French-language copy for one of his young sons. He assumed that his son would be satisfied with viewing the book's illustrations but, in response to questions about the stories themselves, Wright set himself the task of translating them one-by-one in his spare time. It is not known when that translation work was completed, but a preliminary edition was published in 1839. Composed of a selection of the translated Fables, it was published anonymously under the title Fables of La Fontaine: A Present for the Young.

The complete translation (labeled the "Second Edition") was in place by September 1841. Its original publication was as a two-volume deluxe set, providing the original French-language fables alongside their translations and also including woodcut illustrations by J. J. Grandville. The book sold for $10 (approximately equivalent to $250 in 2016 U.S. dollars). A substantive review appeared in the October 1841 issue of the North American Review. Although it found fault with some elements of the translation, the review was generally favorable. It declared Wright to be "kith and kin with La Fontaine" and that the "general character of his English style is pure, racy, and lively".

The original 1841 edition was issued via two publishers, one in Boston and another in New York. But because it was financed by Wright himself, his was the first name to appear in the list of publishers on the book's title page. And even before the book appeared in October 1841, Wright made extended tours of other cities, seeking to secure advance "subscriptions" from individuals based on a prospectus and a sample copy of the book. These trips often kept him away from home for weeks at a time. They continued to be made after it was published and remained Wright's major activity for more than two years, so much so that he described his life during this period as that of a "peddler". The bookselling trips did not cease until the latter part of 1843. It was during one of the last of them, to Pittsburgh in August 1843, that Wright's infant son died, a fact that he did not learn until he returned to Boston two weeks later.

Wright's translation received criticism from religious quarters for being, in their view, unsuitable for children. Wright objected to this criticism, noting that "there are some people who would seem too delicate and refined to read their Bibles". Nonetheless, he published an expurgated version in early 1843, labeling it the Sixth Edition. This version, intended for use by schoolchildren, was a single-volume book that contained neither the original French-language fables nor any of the illustrations. In addition to making various changes in wording, Wright removed five of the original fables and replaced them with five of his own newly-written ones. This expurgated version saw at least one re-printing, in 1856 by the Boston firm of Sanborn, Carter and Bazin (see ). For reasons not clear, the 1856 version was labeled the Fourth Edition.

Although he had already stopped his bookselling tours by the end of 1843, Wright accepted an offer from his Boston publisher to take a sales trip to England in March 1844. Planned as a three-month trip, but actually lasting seven months, it had the primary purpose of selling particular new books from that publisher. For this, Wright was paid a flat fee of $500 (approximately equivalent to $13,000 in 2016 U.S. dollars), plus the cost of passage and a commission on the books sold. In addition, the publisher did not object to Wright selling copies of his Fables. The trip was a financial failure. But despite this, Wright's major biographers consider it to have been a milestone in his life. Upon hearing that he was travelling to England, a friend in the Massachusetts insurance industry asked him to gather information on actuarial practices there and, to that end, provided Wright with a letter of introduction to English actuary Joshua Milne. This exposure to the English insurance industry ultimately led to Wright's own thirty-year career in that field.

Even before Wright traveled to England, his translation had seen British publication when it was issued in 1842 as part of Smith's Standard Library. There was another publication in 1853, this time by Ingram, Cooke and Company as part of its Universal Library. In both cases, these were low-priced editions that included only the English-language translations (without the original French versions) and none of the illustrations. The record is unclear as to whether the two-volume deluxe edition had ever seen British publication. One London book catalog states that a two-volume edition was published by Wiley and Putnam, but does not provide a specific year of publication (though it must have happened prior to the catalog's printing in 1846). However, a later catalog covering the same period does not report such a publication. At the time of Wright's visit, Wiley and Putnam was a New York company with a newly-established branch office in London. Conceivably, the "publication" being reported in the first catalog might simply have been the existence of books that were brought to England by Wright. But there appears to be nothing in the historical record that corroborates this.

Wright sold his copyright in the book to the New York publishing firm of Derby and Jackson in 1859. After that, the Fables were re-printed several more times by various publishers. The last in the run of American publications appears to be the one done by Macmillan Publishing in 1913. Re-publication also was being done in England, again by various firms. But George Bell & Sons appear to have been the primary publisher starting in 1882, when it issued a "New Edition" of Wright's translation as part of its Bohn's Standard Library. The last of the Bell publications appears to be the one issued in 1917.

Much more recently, an abridged edition was published in 1975 by Jupiter Books (London). This edition included illustrations, but not the ones by Grandville that accompanied Wright's original publication. Instead, it used the illustrations by Gustave Doré that appeared in an 1867 translation by Walter Thornbury. And more recently, a two-volume unabridged version, using the Doré illustrations, was published in 2010 in China and, in 2011, an abridged version featuring illustrations by Marc Chagall was published in Britain.

Other poetry
In late 1844, George Washington Clark published a songbook for the Liberty Party, filled with songs that variously denounced slavery and praised the Liberty Party's presidential nominee James G. Birney. Wright penned the lyrics to two of the songs, "The Fugitive Slave to the Christian" and "Ode to James G. Birney".

The next year (1845), Wright gave a speech to the Phi Beta Kappa Society at his alma mater, Yale College. The speech took the form of a lengthy patriotic poem. It was well-received, so much so that the Society arranged to have copies printed in book form as A Poem, delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society in Yale College August 20, 1845. The 20-page book was published in 1846. It was not registered at the Library of Congress and there is no evidence that the book was ever intended for distribution to the general public.

At some unknown point in time, Wright developed the habit of composing short poems that were never intended to be read by the public. These poems, often reflective or philosophical, were mostly intended to be read by his family. In 1866, Wright arranged for many of them to be printed in book form as Household Stuff and Some Other Things. In a similar vein, his WHO? arranged to have more of them printed posthumously in 1887 as Song for the Million and Other Poems by Father. Neither book was registered at the Library of Congress. Both of Wright's major biographers (the Wrights and Lawrence Goodheart) quote from these poems throughout their biographies.

INTRODUCE APPEALS TEXT

A Word for the Woods || Boston Evening Transcript || January 26, 1881 Poem NOT AN ACCURATE DATE (unless it was in the first edition, and not the second)

Massachusetts insurance reports
Throughout Wright's tenure as a Massachusetts insurance commissioner, the commission was tasked with producing two annual reports to the state legislature. The first was a report on insurance companies doing business in the state (and this included not just life insurers, but also companies that sold fire and marine insurance). The other was a report on "loan fund associations" (precursors of the modern savings and loan associations). For the first three years, both types of insurance companies (i.e., life vs. fire/marine) were discussed in a single publication but, starting with the report for 1861 (published in early 1862), they were discussed in separate publications titled as Parts I and II of the same report. In addition to an extensive listing of data, the reports contained lengthy narratives that discussed the general status of the relevant industry, as well as particular issues that merited mention. All of them were co-signed by Wright and his fellow commissioner George W. Sargent. But both of Wright's major biographers (the Wrights and Goodheart) consider the life insurance material to have been written primarily, if not solely, by him. As for the other material, neither biographer even mentions them. However, Wright himself asserted some degree of authorship in all of the reports.

Each year, Massachusetts produced a multi-volume publication that assembled all of the reports from its agencies, including those from the Insurance Commission. Titled Public Documents of Massachusetts, it was issued pursuant to a state law that required a specified minimum number of printings and further specified that a bound copy be sent to every town in Massachusetts. And in 1865, Massachusetts re-published the first seven of Wright's life insurance reports as a stand-alone volume under the title Massachusetts Reports on Life Insurance: 1859–1865 (which covered the reports for the years 1858 through 1864). The re-publication included a technical appendix that was explicitly attributed solely to Wright. This entire volume was re-published by the American Conservation Company in 1932 as part of its Bible of Life Insurance. None of the re-publications included Wright's final life insurance report, which was published in 1866 to address the year ending in 1865.

Notes on the table below:
 * Extended excerpts from the insurance reports (but not the loan-fund reports) were published in the United States Insurance Gazette and Magazine (herein, the Insurance Gazette), a magazine edited by Gilbert E. Currie and published monthly in New York. The excerpts were called "abstracts" and were limited mainly to the narrative portions of the reports.  It is likely that all of the insurance reports were excerpted there, but the table below notes only those for which exact citations are available.
 * Massachusetts Reports on Life Insurance: 1859–1865 is abbreviated as Massachusetts Insurance Reports. Bibliographic detail appears above in the section on Insurance Books.
 * All of the reports are nominally dated to January 1 of the year following the report year. But their narrative sections give the actual dates on which each report was finalized, and these dates are sometimes much later than the nominal dates.  The table provides the month in which the report was finalized.

On-line copies
For most of the entries in the tables on Books, links to on-line copies can be gotten via their listings at the Library of Congress. For those that are not so available, on-line copies are at the following locations:

[WHICH DO NOT HAVE ON-LINE COPIES]

For several of the papers and magazines identified in the tables on Articles, on-line copies can be gotten from the Hathi Trust Digital Library, using the following links:


 * Annual Reports of the American Anti-Slavery Society
 * Selected volumes of the Chronicle
 * Selected volumes of the Insurance Journal
 * Selected volumes of the Insurance Times
 * Volumes of The Index


 * LINK FOR THE QUARTERLY ANTI-SLAVERY JOURNAL
 * Archives of the North American Review at Cornell University's Making of America

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Appletons%27_Cyclop%C3%A6dia_of_American_Biography/Wright,_Elizur

Daughter Ellen's compilation of Wright's work in the conservation field was published in two editions—in 1893 and again in 1904. Both editions contain the same re-printings of Wright's work, which all appear at the same page numbers. The difference between the two editions lies in the narrative section at the start of the book, which is numbered in lower-case Roman numerals. The narrative in the 1893 edition is 22 pages long, but is expanded to 56 pages in the 1904 edition. The expansion largely covers events relating to the Fells in the years after the first edition was published. The two editions are:
 * 1893 edition:
 * 1904 edition: