Henry Beston (1888–1968) was an American writer and naturalist. Born Henry Beston Sheahan on 1 June 1888 in Quincy, Massachusetts, he was educated at Harvard University, taking his B.A. in 1909 and his M.A. in 1911. During the First World War he served as a volunteer ambulance driver with the French Army and then as a U.S. Navy ensign, writing about the war in A Volunteer Poilu (1916) and Full Speed Ahead (1919). His signature work is The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod (1928), an account of a year spent living alone in a small house, the Fo'castle, on the dunes at Eastham, Massachusetts. It became a foundational text of American nature writing, influencing figures such as Rachel Carson, and helped spur the creation of the Cape Cod National Seashore. The house itself was swept away in the Blizzard of 1978 and is commemorated with a National Literary Landmark plaque. His other works include Herbs and the Earth (1935), Northern Farm: A Chronicle of Maine (1948), and children's books such as The Firelight Fairy Book (1919) and The Starlight Wonder Book (1923). In 1929 he married the poet and writer Elizabeth Coatsworth; they lived on a farm in Nobleboro, Maine, which inspired Northern Farm. Regarded as a pioneer of modern American nature writing, he is prized for prose that blends close natural observation with philosophical reflection on humanity's relationship to the natural world. He died on 15 April 1968 in Nobleboro.
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