Edward Sylvester Ellis

Edward Sylvester Ellis (April 11, 1840 – June 20, 1916) was an American author.

Ellis was a teacher, school administrator, journalist, and the author of hundreds of books and magazine articles that he produced by his name and by a number of pen names. Notable fiction stories by Ellis include The Steam Man of the Prairies and Seth Jones, or the Captives of the Frontier. Internationally, Edward S. Ellis is probably known best for his Deerfoot novels read widely by young boys until the 1950s.

Dime novels

Seth Jones was a prototypical early dime novel published by Beadle and Adams. It is said that Seth Jones was one of Abraham Lincoln's favorite stories. During the mid-1880s, after a fiction-writing career of some thirty years, Ellis eventually began composing more serious works of biography, history, and persuasive writing. Of note was "The Life of Colonel David Crockett", which had the story of Davy Crockett giving a speech usually called "Not Yours To Give". It was a speech in opposition to awarding money to a Navy widow on the grounds that Congress had no Constitutional mandate to give charity. It was said to have been inspired by Crockett's meeting with a Horatio Bunce, a much quoted man in Libertarian circles, but one for whom historical evidence is non-existent.

Pseudonyms

Besides the one hundred fifty-nine books published by his own name, Ellis' work was published under various pseudonyms, including:

"James Fenimore Cooper Adams" or "Captain Bruin Adams" (68 titles)

"Boynton M. Belknap" (9 titles)

"J. G. Bethune" (1 title)