Christopher Pearse Cranch (March 8 1813 – 1892) was a United States writer and artist.

Cranch was born in the District of Columbia, and educated at Columbian College and Harvard Divinity School, then spending a little time as a Unitarian minister. In a subsequent versatile career he was a magazine editor, caricaturist, children's fantasy writer (the Huggermugger books), poet (The Bird and the Bell with Other Poems in 1875), translator, and landscape painter .

He is now remembered chiefly in connection with the Transcendentalists. His caricatures of Ralph Waldo Emerson were later collected as Illustrations of the New Philosophy: Guide. He edited for a time a Transcendentalist publication, and was a member of the Transcendental Club. He resided mostly in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Reference

The Life And Letters Of Christopher Pearse Cranch: By His Daughter Lenora Cranch Scott (1917) has been reprinted.