Nordhoff, Charles

Nordhoff, Charles (nôrd`hŏf), 1830–1901, American journalist and author, b. Westphalia. In 1835 he emigrated with his family to Cincinnati. His service (1844–47) in the navy, and later on whaling and fishing ships, provided literary material for his books Nine Years a Sailor (1857) and Stories of the Island World (1857). He wrote for the New York Evening Post (1858–71), part of the time as editor, and was Washington correspondent (1874–90) for the New York Herald. A leading political commentator of his day, Nordhoff was the author of such works as Communistic Societies in the United States (1875) and The Cotton States in the Spring and Summer of 1875 (1876). His grandson,

Charles Bernard Nordhoff, 1887–1947, was coauthor with J. N. Hall of Mutiny on the Bounty (1932), Men Against the Sea (1933), Pitcairn's Island (1934), and other works.