author
Fred Thorpe
A prolific dime novelist writing under the name Fred Thorpe, he filled popular magazines and cheap paper editions with fast-moving adventure for late-19th-century readers. His surviving work hints at the energy and imagination that made pulp-era fiction so addictive.
1 Audiobook
About the author
Writing as Fred Thorpe, Frank Albert Stearns was an American author best remembered for dime novels and other popular fiction. Reference sources identify Fred Thorpe as a pseudonym and describe him as a busy writer of sensational adventure tales during the late 1800s, a period when inexpensive fiction reached a huge mass audience.
He also published books under his own name, including Chris and the Wonderful Lamp (1895) and Sindbad, Smith and Co. (1896), both drawing on Arabian Nights-style fantasy. Science Fiction Encyclopedia notes that he wrote in many dime-novel modes and was especially known for exuberant "marvel" stories, while Project Gutenberg lists Ahead of the Show among the works still available to modern readers.
Reliable biographical details beyond that are fairly sparse in the sources I found. I couldn't confirm a trustworthy portrait image for him, which is not unusual for authors from the dime-novel era whose lives were only lightly documented.