author
George Thompson
b. 1823
A prolific 19th-century American writer of sensational urban fiction, he helped define the "city mysteries" style with lurid, fast-moving stories set in New York and Boston. Writing at times under the pen name "Greenhorn," he aimed his work at a broad popular audience rather than the literary elite.
3 Audiobooks
Venus in Boston: A Romance of City Life
by George Thompson
My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself.
by George Thompson
City Crimes; Or, Life in New York and Boston
by George Thompson
About the author
Born in 1823, George Thompson was an American author remembered for lively, sensational fiction and for writing in forms that reached everyday readers. Sources connected with his books identify him as the author of My Life; Or, the Adventures of Geo. Thompson and link him to a large body of popular fiction, including magazine serials, pamphlets, and novels.
He is especially associated with City Crimes; Or, Life in New York and Boston (1849), a novel published under the pen name "Greenhorn." That book is now often discussed as an early example of the "city mysteries" tradition, a genre fascinated by the hidden, rough, and corrupt sides of urban life.
Some modern references describe him as one of the most prolific writers in this vein and note that he also edited The Broadway Belle, a sporting paper, in the 1850s. Even where details of his life remain hazy, his reputation rests on helping shape a vivid, sensational corner of 19th-century American popular literature.