Frank Merriwell's "Father": An Autobiography by Gilbert Patten (Burt L. Standish) - Softcover

Patten, Gilbert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0806148012 ISBN 13: 9780806148014

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press, 1964

Synopsis

American drama critic George Jean Nathan once expressed a hope in a “Suggestion for a Biography” for The American Mercury: “A book I should like to read—and doubtless there are thousands of ex-youngsters of the 1800’s and early 1890’s who have the same feeling about it as I have—would be a biography, or better still an autobiography, if he is still living, of the man known as Burt Standish, author of the famous Frank Merriwell literature. Who was this Standish; whence came he; what was his history?”
               
Now, nineteen years after his death and thirty-four years after Nathan expressed his wish, the autobiography of Burt L. Standish, who was really Gilbert Patten, appears for the first time. The author of the Frank and Dick Merriwell stories had not quite completed his account of himself but it has been possible, from his papers, for Harriet Hinsdale and Tony London to reconstruct the last phase of a long, happy, and exciting life. The result is a book scarcely less absorbing than the purely fictional accounts Gilbert Patten wrote.
               
The Merriwell books, from their inception in 1896 to today, have sold more than 500,000,000 copies. With their success, Patten (or Burt L. Standish) became the real king of the dime and half-dime novelists. His heroes remain today among the best-remembered figures of an age of derring-do.

About this title

About the Author:

William George “Gilbert” Patten (1866–1945), a writer of dime novels, was best known as author of the Frank Merriwell stories, written under the pen name Burt L. Standish.

Harriett Hinsdale was an author, novelist, screenwriter and playwright.

Tony London, a motion picture and television producer, assisted in the literary administration of the Gilbert Patten papers.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
• Publication date: 1964
• ISBN 10: 0806148012
• ISBN 13: 9780806148014
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 372
• Editor: Hinsdale Mrs. Harriet