Henry Van Dyke

Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933) was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, and ordained as a Presbyterian minister before becoming a professor of English literature at Princeton University, where he taught for over two decades. He wrote widely across genres — sermons, poetry, travel writing, and short fiction — and is remembered above all for "The Story of the Other Wise Man" (1896), an enormously popular Christmas tale imagining a fourth magus who spends a lifetime pursuing Christ, and for the hymn text "Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee." He served as U.S. Minister to the Netherlands and Luxembourg under President Wilson and died in Princeton, New Jersey, at eighty-one.