author
Frederick Whittaker
1838–1889
A restless 19th-century adventurer, soldier, and journalist, he turned frontier experience into fast-moving popular fiction and helped shape the legend of George Armstrong Custer. His life mixed war service, dime novels, and sharp-edged biography in a way that still feels vividly American.
2 Audiobooks
Ruby Roland, the Girl Spy; or, Simon Kenton's Protege
by Frederick Whittaker
Black Nick, the hermit of the hills; or, The expiated crime A story of Burgoyne's surrender
by Frederick Whittaker
About the author
Born in London in 1838, Frederick Whittaker moved to New York as a boy after his family left England. Sources describe him as a journalist, novelist, and former cavalryman who served in the American Civil War, later using the title “Capt. Frederick Whittaker” in print.
He wrote widely in popular forms, including adventure stories and dime novels, and the Science Fiction Encyclopedia notes that some of his work touched early speculative fiction. He is now often remembered for A Complete Life of Gen. George A. Custer (1876), an influential and strongly favorable biography that helped build Custer’s public image for later generations.
Whittaker spent many years in the New York area and died in 1889. What stands out most about him is the range of lives he seemed to live at once: immigrant, soldier, newspaperman, prolific storyteller, and controversial biographer.