Edward L. (Edward Lytton) Wheeler

Edward Lytton Wheeler was an American dime novelist, born in Avoca, New York, in 1854 or 1855. He later worked in Philadelphia managing a theater company before building his reputation as a prolific writer of popular adventure fiction.

Wheeler is remembered above all for creating Deadwood Dick, one of the standout characters of nineteenth-century pulp storytelling. The first Deadwood Dick tale appeared in Beadle's Half-Dime Library in 1877, and the series went on to become one of the best-known western runs in dime-novel publishing.

His fiction mixed invented heroes with well-known frontier names, including Calamity Jane and Sitting Bull, which helped give the stories a vivid, larger-than-life feel. Wheeler died in 1885, but his work remains an important part of early American popular literature.