Rev. Francis J. Finn, S.J.

Francis James Finn was born October 4, 1859 in St. Louis, Missouri to Irish immigrant parents. His lifelong love of reading began with Cardinal Wiseman’s Fabiola, and among his favorites was the work of Dickens.



Though he often suffered from ill health while he was in the Jesuit Seminary at Florissant, Missouri, the hard work he encountered when assigned as prefect of the boarding school at St. Mary’s College in Kansas (which would later become “St. Maure’s” in his famous stories) served as a perfect cure. Here his love of literature and his daily contact with the boys made a happy marriage and resulted in what would eventually become his first book, Tom Playfair.



Father Finn understood boys—their mischief, their humor, their faults, and their generous impulses. His stories were lively and thoroughly entertaining, yet their Catholic spirit was never forced upon the reader. In 1911, The American Catholic Who’s Who called him “the foremost Catholic writer of fiction for young people.”



He was eventually stationed at St. Xavier’s parish school in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he somehow found time amidst his many duties to continue writing books—27 in all. He died on All Souls Day in 1928 and was mourned by children everywhere.