Charles King

Born in Albany, New York, in 1844 and raised in Milwaukee, Charles King built a life that mixed military service with writing. He graduated from West Point after the Civil War and served in the U.S. Army on the western frontier, experiences that later gave his fiction and memoirs their vivid sense of place.

After being wounded in service and leaving the regular army, he became one of the most widely read military authors of his day. He wrote dozens of novels along with historical and biographical works, often drawing on army posts, frontier campaigns, and the everyday lives of officers and soldiers.

King also returned to military duty in later years, serving in the Wisconsin National Guard and during the Spanish-American War. He died in 1933, remembered both as a soldier and as a writer who turned American military life into popular reading for a broad audience.