Edwin L. Sabin

Edwin Legrand Sabin (December 23, 1870 – November 24, 1952) was an American author, primarily of boys' adventure stories, mostly set in the American West.

Biography

Sabin was born in Rockford, Illinois to Henry Sabin and Esther Frances Hotchkiss Sabin, but grew up in Clinton, Iowa, where his father became superintendent of schools when Sabin was less than a year old. Sabin's brother was the author Elbridge Hosmer Sabin. Sabin graduated from Clinton High School in 1888. He attended the University of Iowa until his senior year in 1892, when he left to begin his career as a newspaper reporter. He returned to graduate with Phi Beta Kappa honors in 1900. At the University of Iowa he was a member of Beta Theta Pi and the school's first rugby team.

Sabin worked for a number of newspapers in Iowa and Illinois: the Daily Herald in Clinton, the Des Moines Daily News, the Daily State Register, and the Daily Capital in Des Moines, Iowa, the Morning Democrat in Davenport, Iowa, the Peoria Herald, the Peoria Transcript, and the Peoria Journal in Peoria, Illinois, and Campbell's Weekly in Chicago, Illinois. In May 1893, as a correspondent he accompanied a scientific expedition led by University of Iowa zoology professor Charles Cleveland Nutting on the schooner Emily E. Johnson. The 83-day expedition to the Bahamas stopped at Egg Island, Havana, Bird Key, the Dry Tortugas, and Spanish Wells. It gathered 15,000 specimens, providing material for decades of exhibitions and research.

In October 1896, he married Mary Caroline Nash of Iowa, nine years younger than him, whom he met working in Chicago.