author
Ellsworth Douglass
1863–1933
Best known for the 1899 speculative novel Pharaoh's Broker, this American writer published under the name Ellsworth Douglass while leading a far more restless life in business and travel. The result is an unusual literary profile: a turn-of-the-century entrepreneur whose fiction carries the energy of adventure and early science fiction.
1 Audiobook
Pharaoh's Broker Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner
by Ellsworth Douglass
About the author
Writing as Ellsworth Douglass, Elmer Dwiggins was an American businessman and author born in 1863 and died in 1933. Reference sources identify Ellsworth Douglass as his pseudonym, and they connect him most strongly with Pharaoh's Broker (1899), a work now remembered as an early science-fiction novel.
Accounts of his life describe him not only as a writer but also as a real-estate speculator and insurance broker. His business ventures took him to different countries around the turn of the twentieth century, and that wider experience seems to have fed the imaginative, far-traveled feel of his fiction.
Although he is not a household name today, Douglass remains of interest to readers exploring the roots of speculative fiction. His work stands at an intriguing moment when adventure writing, fantasy, and early visions of other worlds were beginning to blend into what would later be recognized as science fiction.