Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan

Born in California in 1876, Charles Emmett Van Loan built his career as a journalist before becoming one of the best-known writers of sports fiction of his day. Reliable reference sources describe him as a sports journalist and author who wrote about baseball, boxing, golf, and other corners of American sporting life, with work appearing in newspapers and widely read magazines including The Saturday Evening Post.

Van Loan was especially known for humorous, fast-moving stories that blended newsroom observation with fiction. His books include The Lucky Seventh and Taking the Count, and his writing also found its way into early film adaptations and screen work. Even now, he is remembered as a vivid chronicler of the sporting world in the 1910s.

He died in 1919 at just 42 years old. Because readily accessible source pages located here did not provide a clearly verifiable portrait image, no profile image is included.