Nephi Anderson: The First Great Latter-day Saint Novelist and Author of 'Added Upon' (1865–1923)

Nephi Anderson (1865–1923) was the first major novelist of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. His first and best-loved novel, "Added Upon" (1898), traced souls from the premortal world through mortal life and into eternity, and became one of the most widely read works of Latter-day Saint 'home literature'—a literature that sought to show that faithful, ordinary Saint lives were worthy of novelistic treatment. Anderson wrote more than a dozen novels and story collections—"The Castle Builder," "Piney Ridge Knight," "John St. John," "Marcus King, Mormon," "The Story of Chester Lawrence," and others—that wove testimony of the Restoration, the plan of salvation, missionary work, and the temple into the lives of believable characters. BYU Studies called him a 'seer of modern times' whose home-literature novels helped the rising generation imagine faithful lives. For over a century, Latter-day Saints encountered, through his fiction, what it means to live and die in the hope of the gospel.