author
Oll Coomes
1845–1921
A prolific writer of frontier adventures, this Iowa-based dime novelist turned life on the prairies into fast-moving stories for a huge popular audience. His tales of scouts, outlaws, and the American West helped shape the flavor of 19th-century popular fiction.
2 Audiobooks
The Boy Ranger; or, The Heiress of the Golden Horn
by Oll Coomes
About the author
Born in Licking County, Ohio, on August 26, 1845, he moved with his family to Iowa as a boy and grew up in the hard, practical world of pioneer life. Before becoming widely known in print, he worked on the farm, in his father's pottery, and later in newspaper publishing.
Writing as Oll Coomes, he became one of the better-known authors of dime-novel westerns in the late 19th century. He produced a large number of adventure stories for popular weekly and library series, especially tales set on the frontier, where young heroes, scouts, and desperadoes drove the action.
His long career made him a recognizable name to generations of mass-market readers. He died on June 27, 1921, after an automobile accident in Iowa, leaving behind a body of work that captures both the excitement and the mythology of the American frontier.