Judge Henry Augustus Shute (1856-1943) was born and lived in Exeter, New Hampshire. He was a graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy (1875) and Harvard University (1879). He was a lawyer and a judge of the municipal court. In the 1890s, the Exeter News-Letter began publishing a weekly column of Shute's recollections of his boyhood in Exeter. These were self-published by Shute under the titles of Several Hard Characters (1898) and Neighborhood Sketches (1901). In 1902, his third book, The Real Diary of a Real Boy was published which provided Shute with national recognition. He went on to write a total of twenty books, including Brite and Fair (1920) and published extensively in the Saturday Evening Post (1925- 1928).