William Ware

William Ware (1797–1852) was an American Unitarian minister and novelist, born in Hingham, Massachusetts, the son of a clergyman and the brother of the theologian Henry Ware Jr. After Harvard he served from 1821 to 1836 as the first Unitarian minister in New York City. He then turned to writing and published three historical novels in letters set in the Roman Empire of the third and fourth centuries: Zenobia, or The Fall of Palmyra, its sequel Aurelian, originally called Probus, and Julian, or Scenes in Judea. Widely read in their day, they combined scholarship with a Unitarian interest in the early church. He also edited the Christian Examiner.