| Show noname author au t or of famed nickel novels js Is dead luis P was the creator of fabulous frank reade jr by ELMO SCOTT WATSON released by western newspaper union the newspapers RECENTLY throughout the country printed a brief press association dispatch which said NEW YORK luis P sen arens seventy six years old often called the american jules verne who wrote 1500 1600 dime novels under 27 pseudonyms between 1876 and 1910 died from heart trouble yesterday in kings county hospital who began his extraordinary career at the age of fourteen created the fabulous frank reade read e and forecast in fiction many modern mechanical developments son of an immigrant cuban tobacco merchant got his inspiration as a boy from visiting the philadelphia centennial exposition in 1876 at sixteen he was earning a week and at thirty he became president of the frank tousey publication company which published all his works thus was revealed for the first time perhaps to thou w 7 A aw W ia av liar I 1 at I 1 I 1 FUR IND rax I 1 li it 6 JAY tac 40 at alt iao W 1 1 t the air was a cigar shaped balloon that resembled a modern zeppelin suspended below it by slings was the hull of a ship complete with a rudder at the stern and a searchlight at the bow thus it was a combined S ship hip of the air and ship of the sea or in other words a sort of 4 A 11 s gg als NEW horsa HOIE SEt J 11 TU E VORA 1 tsu kit 11 W K F I 1 t MV I 1 j z sands of americans the identity of one of their favorite authors back in the days of their youth when whan they tasted of forbidden fruit be re velling in the adventures of fred fearnot young wild west old king brady and especially frank reade jr for this brief obituary item un masks at last the mysterious tantalizing noname who whose se imagination conjured up for the use of the ingenious frank a host of mechanical marvels which seemed weirdly improbable then but are commonplace enough today we are greatly impressed when modern science and inventive skill produces a mechanical man who can speak and give the correct answer to problems propounded to him when the right buttons are pressed but back in 1890 frank reade jr had an electrical man who could do most of those things if henry ford and the other motor car ri makers takers had read more of no names nickel novels the course of automobile design might have been f far ir different for frank reade jr had a horse made of steel with jointed legs driven by a steam engine inside this animal was attached to a solid tired vehicle in the same loaa location tion where the auto automakers makers attached an engine covered with a hood chood of steel four years later frank reade was staging a race around the world for a purse of he was piloting his flying boat which is amazingly like a modern autogiro and his opponent in the race was jack wright diving through the seas in ma his submarine which had a neat glass enclose enclosed ed conning tower in fact frank was a most versatile designer effly of flying machines his monitor of forecast of our modern seaplanes sea planes by the next year 1895 frank had had another idea for air travel noname called it frank reade jr s greatest flying machine in which he set out for a bit of fighting the terror 0 of f the coast the picture on the front cover of this nickel thriller shows a large biplane driven by two propellers propeller below which is suspended a land boat with a hull similar to that on on the monitor of the air but equipped with four wheels on which it could taxi along the ground in landing or taking off perhaps the most extraordinary invention of this ingenious youth was his clipper of the prairie which was a sort of a cross between a war tank and a trailer home on wheels and which frank used for fighting the apaches in the far southwest st above the cabin or living quarters was an observation platform on which were built two turre turrets ts and in front of the cabin was mounted a good sized cannon if 11 the red devils escaped destruction st by the shots from this cannon they could be impaled upon a sharp ram like projection from the front of the clipper this ram was also useful in getting a supply of fresh meat for frank and his friends for the picture on the cover of this particular volume indicates that it was used also for impaling buffalo I 1 incidentally the clipper was propelled by steam on cater pillar tread wheels which indicates that bur our modern caterpillar tractors are old stu stuff ff according to edmund pearson in his dime novels or following an old trail in popular literature published by little brown and company in in 1929 the frank Tous tousey ey firm of which was president in in addition to the frank reade weekly also issued issue dWork work and win with its hero fred fearnot the wild west weekly with young wild west and his sweetheart arietta anetta secret service with old king brady and young king brady and pluck and luck the old king brady stories stones he says are attributed to francis worcester doughty Doug tty who curiously was the author of works on numismatics and archeology archaeology arche pearson does not give the authorship thor ship of the other franktos frank tousey publications but it is is not unlikely that who was the noname of the frank reade jr yarns also wrote most of the others under one of the 27 pseudonyms mentioned in in the abitua obituary ry story quoted at the beginning of this article T jt 0 T 7 4 soma gg g g y i h v 1 i i 8 j aroa 64 rd of we or 1110 till I 1 11 ll i AIL 7 1 7 t 1 j J A 7 V A A 4 ra 7 t ten years ago there died in Oi orlando lando flaa fia a man whose writing career paralleled that of luis P and the other writers of the nickel libraries and boys weeklies but whose literary product r 0 differed greatly greally from theirs lei r lawas he was kirk munroe and during te e period from 1890 to 1910 one of the biggest events odthe of the year for young america was the appearance pe arance i of a new book which had ad come from his industrious pen munroe was a des descendant cendan t of col Wil william fiam munroe who was an orderly sergeant in the minute men en of lexington mass when they fired the opening guns of the revolution he was born on april 15 1850 at prairie du chien wis where his father and mother both new englanders were Uv living ingin in a mission he was educated in the common schools of appleton wis and later in thi the schools at cambridge mass where his parents returned for a brief time i to the frontier when he was sixteen he persuaded his father to allow him to spend his vacation in kansas city mo which was then a frontier town he reached that place just as a surveying party under dundei gen W J palmer was preparing to explore the vast region west of kansas city by making himself useful about the camp of this exploring and surveying party young munroe secured a job as a tape man thereafter for nearly a year the boy traveled and camped through the wilds he saw much of colorado arizona new mexico and california he was engaged in numerous skirmishes with hostile indians was wounded frequently went hungry and thirsty and suffered in the biting cold of those western plains and mountains once he was the guest of kit carson at fort garland colo he associated with pioneers soldiers rs western bad men and indians indian he was well acquainted with buffalo bill bil cody in california he found a job as a transit man and after he had saved sufficient money he took passage for south america where lie he traveled extensively before returning to cambridge I 1 guern once home he entered harvard taking an engineering course but this proved rather slow and he left college at the end of his I 1 first year he was then nineteen once more he went west to kansas city but this time he was not so successful in finding work since the labor of surveying was temporarily pora rily suspended and he came back east A star reporter then was to occur the incident that largely determined his future career his familiarity with the big horn country where custers force had just been killed gave him a chance to land a job as a reporter on the new york sun here he found a congenial field for his talents he soon moved to the new york times and there he became a star reporter A brilliant career in journalism was fairly opening before him when again he was diverted into another field harpers started a magazine called harpers young people designed for the youth of the nation and the editorship of this magazine was offered to munroe at a salary of 30 a week about one third of the pay he had been receiving nevertheless he accepted this offer and began his duties the magazine was immediately m ed successful munroe two years after lie he had been made editor began to write stories for boys his first book Wal kuHa was published in 1886 from that time on his books multiplied with amazing rapidity until in all he had published 35 volumes af after ter publishing the first few of these books munroe gave up his editorial duties to devote ote himself entirely er to writing chehad married miss mary barr daughter of amelia barr the novelist and a contributor to the magazine and together they traveled extensively both for pleasure and to collect the material for stor stories I 1 es after the death of his wife hi he moved to coconut grove fla fia a suburb of miami a place which he had visited as a youth n a canoe and had become one of the pioneers and founders of that community before miami was a town he lived in seclusion in coconut grove for many years and in 1924 married again this time time to miss mabel stearns steams daughter of william F stearns steams of amherst mass |
