Raymond Mc Alden

Raymond MacDonald Alden (1873–1924) was an American author, literary scholar, and educator. He taught English literature at several universities and is remembered both for his academic contributions to the study of Shakespeare and English verse, and for his work as a writer of imaginative stories for younger readers.

Alden is perhaps best known in the realm of children’s literature for his Christmas story Why the Chimes Rang, a tale set in a faraway land where a magnificent church stands on a high hill above a great city. According to the story’s legend, the church’s bells — silent for many years — would ring only when a truly worthy gift was placed upon its altar. The story follows two young brothers and the moral weight of genuine sacrifice and sincerity, themes that Alden returns to with quiet conviction. Its setting is deliberately distant and otherworldly, giving the narrative the atmosphere of a legend or parable rather than a conventional holiday story.

Alden’s fiction often draws on the traditions of folk tales and religious allegory, using simple, accessible prose to explore ideas about virtue, humility, and the nature of true giving. His stories tend to unfold in timeless, undefined settings — kingdoms, cathedrals, faraway countries — which lend them a quality closer to myth than to realistic fiction. This approach allowed him to address moral questions in a way that felt universal rather than didactic.

Beyond his storytelling, Alden made significant contributions to literary scholarship. He edited and annotated works on English poetry and produced academic studies on versification and Shakespearean drama. His dual career as scholar and storyteller was not unusual for writers of his era, when university educators frequently contributed to popular and children’s literature alongside their academic work.

Though Alden’s scholarly output has largely been absorbed into the broader history of literary criticism, Why the Chimes Rang has endured as his most widely read work, anthologized in collections of Christmas literature and adapted for the stage on numerous occasions. It stands as a small but durable contribution to the tradition of morally resonant seasonal storytelling in American literature.