Lester Dent (October 12, 1904 – March 11, 1959) was an American pulp-fiction writer, best known as the creator and main writer of the series of novels about the scientist and adventurer Doc Savage. The 159 Doc Savage novels that Dent wrote over 16 years were credited to the house nameKenneth Robeson.
Dent was born in 1904 in La Plata, Missouri. He was the only child of Bernard Dent, a rancher, and Alice Norfolk, a teacher before her marriage. The Dents had been living in Wyoming for some time, but had returned to La Plata so that Mrs. Dent could be with her family during the birth. The Dents returned to Wyoming in 1906, where they worked a ranch near Pumpkin Buttes, Wyoming.[2]
Dent's early years were spent in the lonely hills of Wyoming. He attended a local one-room school house, often paying for tuition with furs that he had caught.[3] He had few companions or friends; this early loneliness may have helped develop his talents as a story-teller.[4]
Around 1919, the Dent family returned to La Plata for good, where Dent's father took up dairy farming. Dent completed his elementary and secondary education there.[5]
In 1923, Dent enrolled at Chillicothe Business College in Chillicothe, Missouri. His original goal was to become a banker. However, while standing in the application line, he began talking to a fellow applicant about career options. He found out that the starting salary for a telegraph operator was $20 a week more than a bank clerk, so he changed his major to telegraphy. After completing the course, he taught at CBC for a short time.[6]
In 1924, Dent became a telegraph operator for Western Union in Carrollton, Missouri.[6] In 1925, he moved to Ponca City, Oklahoma, to work as a telegrapher for Empire Oil and Gas Company. It was in Ponca City that he met his future wife, Norma Gerling. They were married on August 9, 1925.[7]
Writing career
Dent's "Murder By Circles" was the cover story on the May 1934 issue of All Detective Magazine
In 1926, the Dents moved to Chickasha, Oklahoma, where Dent worked as a telegrapher for the Associated Press. One of Dent's co-workers had published a story in a pulp magazine, earning the huge sum (for that time) of $450. Dent, a voracious reader, was very familiar with pulp magazines of the day, and was sure he could write at least as well, if not better. He took advantage of the slow time during the graveyard shift to write. His first professional sale was an action-adventure story entitled "Pirate Cay"; it appeared in the September 1929 issue of Top Notch magazine.[8][9]
Shortly after the publication of his story, Dent was contacted by Dell Publishing in New York City. They were willing to offer him $500 a month if he would write exclusively for their magazines.[10] Dent, stunned by the good fortune, took some time considering the offer, but eventually accepted.[11] The Dents relocated to New York, arriving January 1, 1931. Dent quickly learned the trade of the pulp writer, teaching himself how to write quickly and with few rewrites. After Dell ended its pulp line in May 1931, Dent retreated to Missouri to regroup. Soon, he was back in New York, writing for the other pulp chains.[12]
In 1932, Henry Ralston of Street and Smith Publications contacted Dent with a proposition for a new magazine. Ralston had scored a great success with The Shadow magazine, and was interested in developing a second title around a central character. He had in mind an adventure hero, which appealed to Dent's love of that genre. While Dent was unhappy to later discover that his stories would be published under a house name (Kenneth Robeson), he was happy to receive $500 per novel (which would later increase to $750), and accepted Ralston's offer.[13]
Issue Number 1 of Doc Savage magazine hit the stands in February 1933; within 6 months it was one of the top selling pulp magazines on the market. Much of the success stemmed from Dent's fantastic imagination, fueled by his own personal curiosity. Dent was able to use the freedom that his new-found financial security allowed him, to learn and to explore. In addition to being a wide-ranging reader, Dent also took courses in technology and the trades. He earned both his amateur radio and pilot license, passed both the electricians' and plumbers' trade exams,[14] and was an avid mountain climber. His usual method was to learn a subject thoroughly, then move on to another. An example is boating: in May 1934, Dent bought a 40-foot two-masted Chesapeake Bay "bugeye" schooner, Albatross. He and his wife lived on it for several years, sailing it up and down the eastern seaboard and even doing some sunken-treasure hunting in the Caribbean,[15] then sold it in 1940.[16]
The Dents traveled extensively as well, enough to earn Lester a membership in the Explorers Club.[17] He was sponsored by fellow pulp writer J. Allan Dunn and Navy Reserve Captain Charles Richardson Pond (1889–1969), a member of the family that owned Pond's Cosmetics and a pioneer of transoceanic flight. He was elected to membership on November 9, 1936, but was apparently not all that involved in the Club beyond bouncing story ideas off more experienced members. He contributed to a year-long one-time fundraiser for the Club conducted throughout the year 1939, for which he was awarded a sterling silver miniature of the coveted Explorers Club Medal, No. 89 of an unknown number of such medallions, with a chain allowing it to be worn as a bracelet. He stopped paying his annual dues in December 1945 and was dropped from membership for this delinquency in January 1948.
In 1940, the Dents returned to La Plata for good.[18] Dent continued to write for Doc Savage, but also found time to work in the other genres. His post-1941 Doc Savage work benefited from this; the later Savage novels are known for their tighter plotting, improved dialogue, and a shift towards mystery instead of super-science. Doc Savage himself began to shed his superhuman image, and to show a more fallible, human side. Dent may have recycled some generic detective stories as Doc tales; King Joe Cay features Doc working alone, in disguise, with no aides, gadgets, or headquarters, and an interest in the ladies.
Doc Savage Magazine ceased publication in 1949.[19] Of the 181 Doc Savage novels published by Street and Smith, 179 were credited to Kenneth Robeson; and all but twenty were written by Dent. The first novel, The Man of Bronze, used the name Kenneth Roberts, but this was changed after it was discovered that there was another writer named Kenneth Roberts. The March 1944 issue, "The Derelict of Skull Shoal", was accidentally credited to Lester Dent. This was the only time during the run of the magazine that Dent's real name was used.[20] Following his tenure on Doc Savage, Dent found continuing success as a mystery and western writer. His last published short story was a Western entitled "Savage Challenge", published in the February 22, 1958, issue of the Saturday Evening Post.[21] A last novel, Lady in Peril, was released as half of an Ace Double the month that Lester died.[22]
Dent suffered a heart attack in February 1959. He was hospitalized, but subsequently died on March 11, 1959. Dent is buried in the La Plata cemetery.[23][24]
Since his death, Lester Dent has lived on in reprints and new stories discovered and marketed by his literary agent, Will Murray.[26] In 2009, Hardcase Crime published his noir novel, Honey in His Mouth (written 1956, previously unpublished) to rave reviews. Black Dog Books has released five volumes of The Lester Dent Library. Altus Press issued The Weird Adventures of the Blond Adder in 2010 and Hell in Boxes: The Exploits of Lynn Lash and Foster Fade in 2012.
Dent also appears in Craig McDonald's Hector Lassiter novel The Running Kind (2014), which touches on Dent's passion for ham radio and aerial photography enterprises, c.1950.
Pulp fiction formula
Dent's "Master Fiction Plot", often referred to as the "Lester Dent Formula," is a widely circulated guide to writing a salable 6,000-word pulp story. It has been recommended to aspiring authors by Michael Moorcock, among others. Moorcock summarizes the formula by suggesting: "split your six-thousand-word story up into four fifteen hundred word parts. Part one, hit your hero with a heap of trouble. Part two, double it. Part three, put him in so much trouble there's no way he could ever possibly get out of it...All your main characters have to be in the first third. All your main themes and everything else has to be established in the first third, developed in the second third, and resolved in the last third."[28]
Pulp magazines were inexpensive fiction magazines that were published from 1896 through the 1960s. The term "pulp" derives from the cheap wood pulp paper on which the magazines were printed. In contrast, magazines printed on higher-quality paper were called "glossies" or "slicks". The typical pulp magazine had 128 pages; it was 7 inches (18 cm) wide by 10 inches (25 cm) high, and 0.5 inches (1.3 cm) thick, with ragged, untrimmed edges. Pulps were the successors to the penny dreadfuls, dime novels, and short-fiction magazines of the 19th century.
Doc Savage is a fictional character of the competent man hero type, who first appeared in American pulp magazines during the 1930s and 1940s. Real name Clark Savage Jr., he is a polymathic scientist, explorer, detective, and warrior who "rights wrongs and punishes evildoers." He was created by publisher Henry W. Ralston and editor John L. Nanovic at Street & Smith Publications, with additional material contributed by the series' main writer, Lester Dent. Doc Savage stories were published under the Kenneth Robeson name. The illustrations were by Walter Baumhofer, Paul Orban, Emery Clarke, Modest Stein, and Robert G. Harris.
Kenneth Robeson was the house name used by Street & Smith publications as the writer of their popular characters Doc Savage and later Avenger. Lester Dent wrote most of the Doc Savage stories; others credited under the Robeson name included:
Ronald Joseph Goulart was an American popular culture historian and mystery, fantasy and science fiction author.
The Avenger is a fictional character whose original adventures appeared between September 1939 and September 1942 in the pulp magazine The Avenger, published by Street & Smith, which ran 24 issues. Five additional short stories were published in Clues Detective magazine (1942–1943), and a sixth novelette in The Shadow magazine in 1943. Decades later, newly written pastiches were commissioned and published by Warner Brothers' Paperback Library from 1973 to 1974.
Walter Ryerson Johnson was a 20th-century American pulp fiction writer and editor. He wrote in many genres, but is probably best known at having been one of the men who wrote Doc Savage novels, under the pseudonym Kenneth Robeson. He also published works under the names "Matthew Blood" and "Peter Field".
Lawrence Louis Donovan was an American pulp fiction writer who wrote nine Doc Savage novels under the pseudonym Kenneth Robeson, a pen name that was used by other writers of the same publishing house. However, there are nine Doc Savage novels duly credited to Donovan, published between November 1935 and July 1937.
William Gibson Bogart was an American pulp fiction writer. He is best known for writing several Doc Savage novels, under the pseudonym Kenneth Robeson.
Street & Smith or Street & Smith Publications, Inc., was a New York City publisher specializing in inexpensive paperbacks and magazines referred to as dime novels and pulp fiction. They also published comic books and sporting yearbooks. Among their many titles was the science fiction pulp magazine Astounding Stories, acquired from Clayton Magazines in 1933, and retained until 1961. Street & Smith was founded in 1855, and was bought out in 1959. The Street & Smith headquarters were at 79 Seventh Avenue in Manhattan; they were designed by Henry F. Kilburn.
William Murray is an American novelist, journalist, short story, and comic book writer. Much of his fiction has been published under pseudonyms. With artist Steve Ditko, he co-created the superhero Squirrel Girl.
The Shadow was an American pulp magazine that was published by Street & Smith from 1931 to 1949. Each issue contained a novel about the Shadow, a mysterious crime-fighting figure who had been invented to narrate the introductions to radio broadcasts of stories from Street & Smith's Detective Story Magazine. A line from the introduction, "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows", prompted listeners to ask at newsstands for the "Shadow magazine", which convinced the publisher that a magazine based around a single character could be successful. Walter Gibson persuaded the magazine's editor, Frank Blackwell, to let him write the first novel, The Living Shadow, which appeared in the first issue, dated April 1931.
Paul Malmont is an American author who has specialized in books considering the style and tropes of popular fiction of the past, making the writers of that popular fiction the heroes and protagonists of his own work.
Doc Savage was an American pulp magazine that was published from 1933 to 1949 by Street & Smith. It was launched as a follow-up to the success of The Shadow, a magazine Street & Smith had started in 1931, based around a single character. Doc Savage's lead character, Clark Savage, was a scientist and adventurer, rather than purely a detective. Lester Dent was hired to write the lead novels, almost all of which were published under the house name "Kenneth Robeson". A few dozen novels were ghost-written by other writers, hired either by Dent or by Street & Smith. The magazine was successful, but was shut down in 1949 as part of Street & Smith's decision to abandon the pulp magazine field completely.
The Man of Bronze is a Doc Savage pulp novel by Lester Dent writing under the house name Kenneth Robeson. It was published in March 1933. It was the basis of the 1975 movie Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze starring Ron Ely.
Daisy Sarah Bacon was an American pulp fiction magazine editor and writer who was best known as the editor of Love Story Magazine from 1928 to 1947. She moved to New York in 1917, working at several jobs before being hired in 1926 by Street & Smith, a major pulp magazine publisher, to assist with "Friends in Need", an advice column in Love Story Magazine. Two years later, she was promoted to editor of the magazine, retaining that role for nearly twenty years. Love Story was one of the most successful pulp magazines, and Bacon was frequently interviewed about her role and her opinions of modern romance. Some interviews commented on the contrast between her personal life as a single woman, and the romance in the stories she edited; she did not reveal in these interviews that she had a long affair with a married man, Henry Miller, whose wife was the writer Alice Duer Miller.
The Nemesis of Evil is a science fiction novel by American writer Lin Carter, the first in his "Zarkon, Lord of the Unknown" series. It was first published in hardcover by Doubleday in 1975, with a paperback edition following from Popular Library in March 1978. It was reissued by Wildside Press in 1999. An ebook edition was issued by Thunderchild Publishing in August 2017.
The Earth-Shaker is a science fiction novel by American writer Lin Carter, the fourth in his "Zarkon, Lord of the Unknown" series. It was first published in hardcover by Doubleday in July 1982. An ebook edition was issued by Thunderchild Publishing in November 2017.
The Volcano Ogre is a science fiction novel by American writer Lin Carter, the third his "Zarkon, Lord of the Unknown" series. It was first published in hardcover by Doubleday in 1976, with a paperback edition following from Popular Library in November 1978. It was reissued by Wildside Press in 1999. An ebook edition was issued by Thunderchild Publishing in October 2017.
Cannaday, Marilyn (1990). Bigger Than Life: The Creator of Doc Savage. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press. ISBN0-87972-471-4.
Farmer, Philip José (1975). Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life. New York: Bantam Books. pp.18–27. ISBN0385084889.
Goulart, Ron (1988). The Dime Detectives. Mysterious Press. ISBN0892961910.
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