author
John Mackie
1862–1939
Adventure, travel, and frontier life run through these stories by a Scottish-born writer who drew heavily on his years in Australia and Canada. His fiction often turns firsthand experience into lively tales of the Canadian West and other far-flung settings.
1 Audiobook
About the author
Born in Stirling, Scotland, in 1862, John Mackie later spent time in Australia before moving on to Canada. Reference works on his career describe him as a traveller and author, and several sources connect his fiction closely to the years he spent in frontier settings.
AustLit preserves Mackie's own account of his earlier life, where he said that in his youth he worked as a stock-rider, pioneer, and gold-digger in northern Australia, and later served in the Royal North-West Mounted Police in British North America. Bibliographic sources also note that his experiences in the Canadian West furnished material for many of his stories.
Mackie wrote popular adventure fiction, including novels such as The Devil's Playground, Canadian Jack, and The Rising of the Red Man. He died in England in 1939. Because a clear verified portrait image could not be confirmed from the sources I checked, no profile image is included here.