St. George Henry Rathborne

St George Henry Rathborne who also wrote as Harrison Adams and many other names, was an American author of boys' stories and dime novels. He is believed to have produced over 330 volumes of fiction in the course of a 60-year career. He had a proclivity for and skill in producing outdoor adventure stories, and his best works fall within that category.

Rathborne was born in Covington, Kentucky to Gorges Lowther Rathborne and Margaret H. Robertson Rathborne. He attended Woodward High School, Cincinnati, the oldest public high school in the United States. He married Jessie Fremont Conn in 1879, and with her had four children. Rathborne lived in northern New Jersey for most of his adult life.

Rathborne was affiliated with various dime novel publishers over the course of four decades, but most strongly associated with Street & Smith, with whom he spent 20 years as author and editor. After 1910, he wrote almost exclusively in the juvenile series book genre. Frequently wrote under pseudonyms, and such works account for the bulk of his literary output. His pseudonyms are many and poorly documented, and some remain unidentified. He probably used at least 30 different pen names in his career as a dime novelist, and more than 20 others during his years of series book writing. Poor documentation of his pseudonyms makes the attribution of his works occasionally difficult, and the full extent of his published writings may never be known. There are more liberal estimates of his output, and it is possible that he produced as many as 450 novels.

Rathborne wrote under many names, including Harrison Adams, Hugh Allen, Oliver Lee Clifton, Duke Duncan, Aleck Forbes, Lieutenant Keene, Marline Manly, Mark Merrick, Marne Miller, Warne Miller, Harry St. George, W. B. Lawson, Dash Dale, Col. Lawrence Leslie, Jack Howard, Ward Edwards, Old Broadbrim, Jack Sharpe, Major Andy Burton, A Private Detective, Alex. Robertson, M.D., Herbert Carter, Gordon Stewart, John Prentice Langley, Louis Arundel and Col. J.M. Travers. to add to the confusion it was not unknown for authors to use the same pseudonym when writing for a particular publishing house.

Rathborne died in Newark, New Jersey aged 83.