H. Bedford-Jones

Henry James O'Brien Bedford-Jones (April 29, 1887 – May 6, 1949) was a Canadian-American historical, adventure fantasy, science fiction, crime and Western writer who became a naturalized United States citizen in 1908.

Biography

Bedford-Jones was born in Napanee, Ontario, Canada in 1887. His family moved to the United States when he was a teenager and he eventually became a naturalized U.S. citizen. After being encouraged to try writing by his friend, writer William Wallace Cook, Bedford-Jones began writing dime novels and pulp magazine stories. Bedford-Jones was an enormously prolific writer; the pulp editor Harold Hersey once recalled meeting Bedford-Jones in Paris, where he was working on two novels simultaneously, each story on its own separate typewriter. Bedford-Jones cited Alexandre Dumas as his main influence, and wrote a sequel to Dumas' The Three Musketeers, D'Artagnan (1928). He wrote nearly 200 novels, 400 novelettes, and 800 short stories, earning the nickname "King of the Pulps". His works appeared in a number of pulp magazines. Bedford-Jones' main publisher was Blue Book magazine; he also appeared in Adventure, All American Fiction; All-Story Weekly, Argosy, Short Stories, Top-Notch Magazine, The Magic Carpet/Oriental Stories, Golden Fleece Historical Adventure, Ace-High Magazine, People's Story Magazine, Hutchinson's Adventure-Story Magazine, Detective Fiction Weekly, Western Story Magazine, and Weird Tales.

Bedford-Jones wrote numerous works of historical fiction dealing with several different eras, including Ancient Rome, the Viking era, seventeenth century France and Canada during the "New France" era. Bedford-Jones produced several fantasy novels revolving around Lost Worlds, including The Temple of the Ten (1921, with W. C. Robertson).