H. Bedford-Jones

Who was H. Bedford-Jones?

Henry James O'Brien Bedford-Jones was a Canadian historical, adventure fantasy, science fiction, crime and Western writer who became a naturalized United States citizen in 1908. 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. He wrote over 100 novels, 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-Story Weekly, Argosy, Short Stories, Top-Notch Magazine, The Magic Carpet, Golden Fleece, Ace-High Magazine, People's Story Magazine, Hutchinson's Adventure-Story Magazine, Detective Fiction Weekly, Western Story Magazine, and Weird Tales.

In addition to writing fiction, Bedford-Jones also worked as a journalist for the Boston Globe, and wrote poetry. Bedford-Jones was a friend of Erle Stanley Gardner and Vincent Starrett.