St George Henry Rathborne (26 December 1854 - 16 December 1938), who also wrote as Harrison Adams and many other names, was an American author of boys' stories and dime novels. He is believed to have produced over 330 volumes of fiction in the course of a 60-year career. He had a proclivity for and skill in producing outdoor adventure stories, and his best works fall within that category.
Rathborne was born in Covington, Kentucky to Gorges Lowther Rathborne and Margaret H. Robertson Rathborne. He attended Woodward High School, Cincinnati, the oldest public high school in the United States. He married Jessie Fremont Conn in 1879, and with her had four children. Rathborne lived in northern New Jersey for most of his adult life.
Rathborne was affiliated with various dime novel publishers over the course of four decades, but most strongly associated with Street & Smith, with whom he spent 20 years as author and editor. After 1910, he wrote almost exclusively in the juvenile series book genre. Frequently wrote under pseudonyms, and such works account for the bulk of his literary output. His pseudonyms are many and poorly documented, and some remain unidentified. He probably used at least 30 different pen names in his career as a dime novelist, and more than 20 others during his years of series book writing. Poor documentation of his pseudonyms makes the attribution of his works occasionally difficult, and the full extent of his published writings may never be known. There are more liberal estimates of his output, and it is possible that he produced as many as 450 novels. [1]
Rathborne wrote under many names, including Harrison Adams, Hugh Allen, Oliver Lee Clifton, Duke Duncan, Aleck Forbes, Lieutenant Keene, Marline Manly, Mark Merrick, Marne Miller, Warne Miller, Harry St. George, W. B. Lawson, Dash Dale, Col. Lawrence Leslie, Jack Howard, Ward Edwards, Old Broadbrim, Jack Sharpe, Major Andy Burton, A Private Detective, Alex. Robertson, M.D., Herbert Carter, Gordon Stewart, John Prentice Langley, Louis Arundel and Col. J.M. Travers. to add to the confusion it was not unknown for authors to use the same pseudonym when writing for a particular publishing house.
Rathborne died in Newark, New Jersey aged 83.
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Pioneer Boys series, as Harrison Adams
This was later bound as "The House Boat Boys; Or, Drifting Down to the Sunny South" (1912)
Nick Carter is a fictional character who began as a dime novel private detective in 1886 and has appeared in a variety of formats over more than a century. The character was first conceived by Ormond G. Smith and created by John R. Coryell. Carter headlined his own magazine for years, and was then part of a long-running series of novels from 1964 to 1990. Films were created based on Carter in France, Czechoslovakia and Hollywood. Nick Carter has also appeared in many comic books and in radio programs.
John Henry Goldfrap was an English-born journalist and author of boys' books, participating in the "American series phenomenon". He always wrote under pseudonyms.
Daniel Carter "Uncle Dan" Beard was an American illustrator, author, youth leader, Georgist and social reformer who founded the Sons of Daniel Boone in 1905, which Beard later merged with the Boy Scouts of America (BSA).
The Motor Boat Boys, by Louis Arundel, is a series of adventure books for boys, published by M. A. Donohue & Co., Chicago, Illinois, from 1912 through 1915. The series featured six teen-aged boys of the Motor Boat Club, and their adventures on various waterways.
John Baker Omohundro, also known as "Texas Jack", was an American frontier scout, actor, and cowboy. Born in rural Virginia, he served the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War. He later served as a civilian scout for the US Army during the American Indian Wars. Before his untimely death, Texas Jack became a legendary figure in the American Old West as a Western showman performing dramas on the stage throughout the country, and was immortalized in dime novels published around the world.
William James Benners, Jr. (1863-1940) was a writer, publisher and historian of dime novels which was a class of popular fiction that flourished in the mid- and late-nineteenth century and into the early twentieth century. Benners was also a poet, actor, and an avid traveler, who maintained correspondence with many dime novel authors and aimed to compile a directory of popular writers and bought and sold stories and publishing rights and also penned some dime novels of his own.
Stewart Edward White was an American writer, novelist, and spiritualist. He was a brother of noted mural painter Gilbert White.
Frederick van Rensselaer Dey was an American dime novelist and pulp fiction writer.
Edward Sylvester Ellis was an American author who was born in Ohio and died at Cliff Island, Maine.
Herbert Strang was the pseudonym of two English authors, George Herbert Ely (1866–1958) and Charles James L'Estrange (1867–1947). They specialized in writing adventure stories for boys, both historical and modern-day.
Reginald Alec Martin was a British author of a children's series and other novels. He wrote under a series of pseudonyms, including E. C. Eliott and Rex Dixon.
Frank V. Webster was a pseudonym used by the Stratemeyer Syndicate. A total of 25 novels in The Webster Series For Boys were published by Cupples & Leon between 1909 and 1915. Titles were reprinted in 1938 by Saalfield Publishing.
Sylvanus Cobb Jr. was an American writer of popular fiction during the mid-19th century. His work was published in the New York Ledger, The Flag of Our Union, The Weekly Novelette, Gleason's Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion, and elsewhere.
Weldon J. Cobb was a Chicago author, reporter and newspaper editor. From 1877 through 1880 he sold fifteen stories to Nickel Library, and from 1891 through 1895 Cobb regularly contributed stories to Golden Hours.
Harry Lincoln Sayler (1863–1913) was a newspaperman and novelist, under his own name and pseudonyms, including as a ghost writer for a popular youth fiction series.
The Chicago Ledger was a story paper published in Chicago, Illinois from 1872 until 1924. Put out by the Ledger Company and edited by Samuel H. Williams, the Ledger was a boilerplate literary magazine. Such periodicals were printed using engraved steel sheets. The plates, or casts of them, were then sent out to be printed and inserted into other newspapers. Ledger subscriptions originally sold for $1 for 52 issues and, by 1879, the paper had a circulation of 10,000. Although begun as a literary paper of "a good class," the Ledger eventually became more melodramatic in tone. In his 1910 book, Newspapers and Periodicals of Illinois, Franklin Scott, notes that "[t]he sensational, although not immoral, character of the Ledger stories, and the use that the large mail-order houses have made of its advertising columns, have given this paper an unusually long life and extensive circulation."
George Charles Jenks was an English-born American dime novelist. Among others he wrote as part of the Nick Carter stable. He also wrote Diamond Dick stories as W. B. Lawson, and is credited as the creator of the character.
A. L. Burt was a New York City-based book publishing house from 1883 until 1937. It was founded by Albert Levi Burt, a 40-year-old from Massachusetts who had come to recognize the demand for inexpensive reference works while working as a traveling salesman. The company began by reprinting home reference works and reprints of popular and classic fiction, before expanding into the field of children's works, particularly series books.
Frank Gee Patchin (1861–1925) was an American author of children's books. He was born in Wayland, New York. He is known for his Battleship Boys series and his Pony Rider Boys series. Patchin has written over 200 adventure books. Many were published under various pseudonyms including Victor Durham and Jessie Graham Flower. He also wrote for the Edward Stratemeyer Syndicate.
Georgia Roberts Durston was an American writer born in New York who authored novels, outdoor articles and poetry. Her novels appeared under various male pen names including George Durston, Major Robert Maitland, Colonel George Durston, Captain John Blaine, and Colonel James Fiske. Her animal poems became familiar to generations of school children through inclusion in the popular Roberts English Series.
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