William Henry Babcock was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on January 19, 1849. He attended the Columbian University Law School (later to become George Washington University Law School) and then took up newspaper work. He eventually moved to Washington, D.C., and practiced law.

[Source: Edwin Anderson Alderman & Joel Chandler Harris (eds.), Library of Southern Literature 15 (New Orleans: Martin & Hoyt Co., 1910)(1907)(Vol. 15, Biographical Dictionary of Southern Authors, 1929, Lucian Lamar Knight ed.)

Babcock's Cian of the Chariots, published in 1898, is sometimes credited as being the first Arthurian historical novel published in the United States.[See preface, Alan Lupack & Barbara Tepa Lupack, King Arthur in America (Rochester, New York: D.S. Brewer, 1999)]

Babcock died on July 20, 1922. [W. Stewart Wallace, A Dictionary of North American Authors Deceased Before 1950 19 (Toronto: The Ryerson Press, 1951)]

Poetry

William Henry Babcock, Lord Stirling's Stand, and Other Poems (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1880)

__________________, Lays from Over the Sea (London: W. Stewart & Co., 1882)

__________________, Legends of the New World (Boston: R. G. Badger, 1919) [online text]

Writings

William Henry Babcock, The Two Lost Centuries of Britain (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Co., 1890) [online text]

__________________, Cypress Beach (Washington: W.H. Babcock, 1890) [online text]

__________________, Cian of the Chariots (Boston: Lothrop Publishing Company, 1898)

__________________, The Tower of Wye: A Romance (Philadelphia: H. T. Coates & Co., 1901) [online text]

__________________, Kent Fort Manor: A Novel (Philadelphia: Henry T. Coates, 1903) [online text]

__________________, Early Norse Visits to North America (Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1913) [online text]

__________________, Legendary Islands of the Atlantic; A Study in Medieval Geography (New York: American Geographical Society, 1922) [online text]