Thomas Bangs Thorpe

Thomas Bangs Thorpe (1815–1878) was an American antebellum humorist, painter, illustrator, and author. He is best known for the short story "The Big Bear of Arkansas", which was first published in the periodical Spirit of the Times in 1841.

Biography Thomas Bangs Thorp was born in Westfield, Massachusetts, on March 1, 1815, the first son of Reverent Thomas Thorp and Rebecca Farnham. He later added the "e" to his last name. His father died when the boy was four years old and the family, which then included two other children, soon moved to Albany, New York, to live with Farnham's parents. He died of Bright's disease in New York on September 20, 1878.

Thorpe's 1854 anti-slavery novel The Master's House focuses on a young man from North Carolina who was educated at a college in New England, then moved to Louisiana with his slaves and established a plantation there. The novel is important for its depiction of slave-trading and its mild, but persuasive, critique of slavery.