Hulbert Footner

Born William Hulbert Footner in Hamilton, Ontario, on April 2, 1879, he was a Canadian-born American writer who worked mainly in detective fiction and also wrote travel books and other nonfiction. He spent his school years in Manhattan and was largely self-educated, building his learning through wide reading rather than formal study.

Early on, he wrote poetry and articles, tried his hand at playwriting, and even traveled as an actor before returning to New York. After a difficult period there, he worked as a reporter for the Calgary Morning Albertan in 1906, and his reporting led into northern travel that later fed his nonfiction writing.

Footner went on to build a long writing career, becoming especially associated with mystery and adventure fiction. He died on November 17, 1944, and remains remembered as a versatile early 20th-century popular writer whose fiction was shaped by real-world experience.