Jos. E. (Joseph Edward) Badger

Born in Payson, Illinois, in 1848, he spent much of his youth in Illinois, Missouri, and Kansas, settings that helped shape the frontier feel of his fiction. He began publishing sketches as a young man and soon started writing longer stories for popular papers and for Beadle & Adams, one of the biggest dime-novel publishers of the era.

He wrote steadily from about 1870 onward, often under his own name and sometimes as Harry Hazard. His work ranged across western and adventure fiction, and many of his stories later circulated widely enough to remain in digital archives today. Among modern readers, The Lost City from 1898 stands out as his best-known book, blending adventure with a lost-world idea that also earned him a place in science-fiction reference works.

Later in life he lived in Kansas, where he also ran a cigar business before moving to Blue Rapids. He died there in 1909. No suitable verified portrait image was found from the sources checked, so no profile image is included.