Frank Cowan

Born in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, in 1844, Frank Cowan built an unusually varied career. He studied law, was admitted to the Pennsylvania bar, later earned a medical degree from Georgetown Medical College, and for a time served as a secretary to President Andrew Johnson. Back in western Pennsylvania, he practiced both law and medicine and also edited his own newspaper.

He was a prolific writer whose work ranged across poetry, fiction, essays, drama, and curious nonfiction. He is especially remembered for travel writing shaped by journeys around the world in the 1880s, with pieces touching on places including Australia, Brazil, Hawaii, India, Korea, and New Zealand. That wide experience gave his writing an adventurous, inquisitive feel.

Cowan also had a taste for spectacle and literary mischief. He helped create a famous newspaper hoax in the 1860s, and late in life he imagined an elaborate Viking-style farewell for himself that became part of his legend, even though it was never fully carried out. He died in 1905, leaving behind both an eclectic body of work and the reputation of a writer who lived as vividly as he wrote.