author
Ned Buntline
1822–1886
A wildly popular 19th-century storyteller, publisher, and journalist, he helped shape the larger-than-life legends of the American frontier. Writing as Ned Buntline, Edward Zane Carroll Judson produced dime novels, sea tales, and sensational adventures that reached a huge readership in his day.
1 Audiobook
Wild Bill's Last Trail
by Ned Buntline
About the author
Born Edward Zane Carroll Judson, he wrote under the pen name Ned Buntline and became one of the best-known popular writers of the 1800s. He worked as a publisher and journalist as well as a novelist, building a reputation for fast-paced, dramatic stories that appealed to a mass audience.
His career ranged from sea stories and sensational city tales to frontier adventures. He is especially remembered for dime novels and for helping turn figures of the American West into legends, including Buffalo Bill Cody, whose fame he helped spread through fiction and the stage.
Buntline's life was nearly as colorful as his books, marked by controversy, publicity, and constant reinvention. Though modern readers often meet him as a curiosity of literary history, his work offers a vivid window into the tastes, myths, and popular culture of 19th-century America.