Joseph M. Tanner

He has been described as "one of the most gifted teachers and writers in the [LDS] Church in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries".

He attended Brigham Young Academy in Provo, Utah before departing the United States as a missionary for the LDS Church.

At the same time, he became the second assistant to Lorenzo Snow in the general superintendency of the church's Deseret Sunday School Union.

From 1906 to 1921 Tanner wrote extensively for the Improvement Era, an official periodical of the LDS Church.

He wrote a number of books, including manuals for the church's Sunday School and a biography of John R. Murdock.