author
d. 1905
An early-20th-century American writer remembered today for the western story The Somnolence of Somers, he left behind a small but intriguing footprint in popular fiction. What survives suggests a brief life and a voice shaped by the magazine-era taste for brisk storytelling and frontier drama.
Very little biographical information about Frank N. Stratton appears to be firmly documented in widely available literary sources. Project Gutenberg identifies him as Frank N. (Frank Nelson) Stratton and currently lists The Somnolence of Somers as his known work in its catalog.
A memorial record for Frank Newton Stratton gives dates of September 18, 1861 – February 15, 1905, and it is possible this is the same person, though the middle name differs from the Frank Nelson Stratton form used in book catalogs. Because the surviving record is thin, it is safest to say that he was an American author active around the turn of the 20th century whose work has outlasted much of the detail of his life.
The Somnolence of Somers was originally published by Street & Smith in New York, placing Stratton in the lively world of mass-market fiction that helped shape popular reading in that era. Even with so little known about him, his surviving story offers a glimpse of the fast-moving, accessible fiction readers enjoyed in the years just before his death.