Clement Alexander Price (1851-1914) was an American journalist, author, editor, and lecturer. He was associated with many prominent literary figures of the time, including Mark Twain, Charles Dudley Warner, John Hay, and John Galsworthy. While traveling in Italy in 1874, he wrote his first book, The Coming Nation, which was published by Harper & Brothers in New York in 1876. He went on to write several works of fiction and nonfiction.
He was born in Richmond, Alabama
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His father was a native of Georgia who later moved to Alabama to pursue a career as a cotton planter. His mother was born in Virginia but moved to Alabama with her parents at an early age. As a child Price had tuberculosis and lived for some time near Memphis and Memphis State University Hospital where he learned much about human suffering and compassion.
His brother Thomas Price became the first president of the American Society for Psychical Research and is considered one of the founders of modern psychical research.
Another brother named John Price also became a translator and writer of fiction and non-fiction books such as A Voice from the Republic of Letters: The Life and Works of Thomas Jefferson (1917).
Price began his career as a newspaper editor at age eighteen while attending school at Centre College in Kentucky. In 1873 he traveled to Europe where he remained for two years studying art history at the Louvre and other famous sites and visiting art galleries throughout France and Italy before returning to America to edit newspapers in New York City and San Francisco before moving west again to become editor of the San Francisco "Alta California" newspaper from 1876 to 1879. After leaving that position he returned briefly to New York writing articles for Harper's Weekly as well as other publications such as Scribner's Monthly Magazine before becoming editor of "The Century Magazine" from 1880-1883.
In 1886 he published his first full-length book titled "The Coming Nation" which discussed how immigrants would be responsible for changing America forever. It was never published in England because its views were considered too radical there at that time. Within a year after publication he sold the copyright to Harper & Brothers who printed it for American readers that same year – 1887 – just four years after it had been written – which was very fast publishing considering that books were being published by then that took decades to reach their audience! In 1888 he published another book called "The Soul of the War", an account of life during the